Warp Trails and Fairy Tales
by Psicygni
Summary: Spock had very specific plans for the break between semesters, none of which involved looking after his younger sister.
1. Chapter 1

Spock is opening the message that just arrived to his padd from Captain Pike when his comm rings. Caught between the two, his curiosity over the message warring with the desire to efficiently answer the call, he has less attention available to pay to the figure that appears in his doorway than he might have otherwise.

"Sir?" he hears as he reaches for his comm, his thumb hovering over the button to accept the call. Nyota's eyes travel to his hand and the comm he holds, before he can acknowledge her standing in the door, not even properly inside his office. Even in the privacy of his own mind, her given name resonates oddly, jarring against the months in which she was 'Cadet' and then 'Uhura'. This further change has stymied him in the days since she asked for it, a novelty to the idea that has yet to wear off and leaves him paused, his eyes on her, his padd in one hand and his comm in the other.

In the space between one ping of his comm and the next, she quickly shakes her head, "It's a bad time."

Time has no morals. He could inform her of this, but she has already given him a small smile and a smaller wave and disappeared as quickly as she arrived. His mouth opens too late to stop her. An illogical action, not just for its delay, but that she is correct - her timing was inopportune. Still, he listens to how her footsteps fade into those in the hallway, the last few cadets on their way towards the quad and the impromptu, informal celebrations they hold there in honor of their completed exams and final commitments of the semester.

It is not surprising that Nyota is one of the last to join them. Likely she was working in one of the language labs. Inconvenient, then, that she did not come by prior to now, as he was alone in his office all afternoon, the room silent and still.

His comm pings once more. He checks the ID before answering it, his eyes immediately back on the still open door.

"Mother," he says.

"Am I interrupting?"

She is. Instead of saying so, he tells her, "I am in my office."

"I'm sorry, do you have a student there?" she asks, and across the lightyears he can hear the beat of concern in her voice, the tenor of apology.

More cadets pass by his door. The groups are dwindling, fewer cadets in each small knot and longer intervals of blank corridor between them.

"No."

"Tell me about your day," his mother prompts. Spock gives the padd in front of him one more look before he reaches for the button to dim the screen. He turns his back to it, pacing to the window in his office that overlooks the roof of a lower floor and beyond, the slope of campus down towards the bay. Fog hangs close to the buildings, too bright white against the comparative dimness of his office.

"I am waiting for a number of students to submit their final papers," he says. She has always preferred specificity in his reports to her and would not be satisfied by an outline of the general banality of finals or the lackluster length of the days, now that classes have ended and his meetings and lectures have largely concluded.

"Are they due soon?"

"In thirteen minutes." Truly, he had expected the indicator light that blinked on his padd to signal the delivery of one to his inbox. The message is instead from Pike, and while it was not entirely unexpected, Spock had not allowed himself to dwell in the anticipation of it. And even had he, he would have predicted it would arrive yesterday or the day before. Though admittedly he does not know the standard elapsed time between submitting an application and resume and an offer of an interview, only that it seemed longer than it should have been, rendering whatever expectation that might have existed diminished in its power, fanciful at most, and therefore entirely unacceptable.

"What was the assignment?" his mother asks, as if she knows his mind has wandered. Impossible, the presence of her thoughts against his muted with distance and time, no more than an occasional nudge, and even now, with her voice in the room with him, that touch is so light as to be a mere wisp of all the strength it once held when he was a boy, living on Vulcan.

"A critique of the leading theoretical approaches in xenosociolinguistics and their potential implementation during First Contacts." The latter half of the assignment is at least useful, even if it means he will read through repetitive descriptions of the prevailing theories in each one of the essays. Still, the practical application of academics to field work has always been of import to him, the tie of the work done in classes to the jobs these students may someday hold on board starships.

He does not look at his padd again but out at the bay and the fog that hangs there.

"I'm sure the papers will be interesting," his mother says, and he can hear the smile in her voice, one that hardly reaches his own expression. "Do you still have that cadet helping you grade?"

He staunches the desire to turn back towards his door. By the sound of it, the corridor has emptied, a lone pair of boots tapping out steps on the tile that likely belong to a colleague, given the speed with which most cadets made their egress. "I do."

"Well, it shouldn't take you that long then," she says.

"I would be finished by the time you arrive regardless," he assures her. He presses his finger into the corner where the window sill meets the wall, dust coming away on his skin.

"I know." Her tone is gentler than is needed. He wipes his finger on his pant leg and resolves to inform the maintenance department that greater attention to detail is necessary. "About that-"

"-You are still coming?" he asks before he can stop himself, the words offered in a quicker manner than he intended. Briefly he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the fog is still too bright. "If your plans have changed, it is-"

"-We're still coming," his mother says. "But Spock, I need to ask a favor of you."

"Of course." The response is automatic and with a speed that he begins to regret as his mother outlines her request.

He does not let her finish. Illogical to interrupt another while they are speaking, but the need to do so arises with a strength that he does not find in himself to dispel. "Mother-"

"-It's only for a few days."

He turns toward his desk, as if she is there to see him take in the work laid out on its surface. "I am occupied."

"The semester ends today."

He rests his hand on the back of his desk chair. "I must grade those papers."

"So fortunate that you have an assistant, in that case."

The angle at which his padd rests is pleasingly aligned with the edge of his desk, though the smudge of his fingerprint mars the surface, the light glinting off it at such an angle that brings the marks to his attention. "I have other obligations."

"Spock." The sound of his mother clearing her throat is clear even with the distance between them. Familiar, too, as is the tone her voice takes. "Your father and I really need you to watch her."

"She can go ahead to Grandmother's house," Spock says.

That his mother did not think of this is attributable to human oversight and therefore it falls to him to point out the rationality of the plan to her. The fact that he chooses not to articulate this is not lost on him, sure that her vexation would reach him even with the distance to Vulcan and more certainly across the connection of their comms.

"We will join her there when we arrive," he says

"I happen to remember a certain someone not particularly appreciating being sent there alone," his mother says. Pointed. That is the descriptor Spock is nearly certain could be attributed to her tone. To say something pointedly.

"Grandmother's house was the logical destination," he says, echoing what he was told at the time, ad nauseum, when he repeatedly asked his mother to stay with her and Father, when his arguments went unlistened to, when his suggestions were dismissed. He could have remained at home, he could have stayed at a neighbor's house, he could have, and would have very much preferred, to be sent to Sybok's family for those days.

Even now, the strength with which he had desired that still exists in him, threatening to well up before he can firmly shutter the place in which it resides.

He shakes his head, a neat, economic gesture, designed to return his mind to the matter at hand. "You yourself said as much."

"And you made clear your displeasure with the decision." There is a significant pause. Likely intended as a moment in which he should reconsider his position. His hand tightens on his chair, as his mother adds, "Please."

"I have my commitments to my classes," he says again, though he knows that if such reasoning did not already sway his mother, it is illogical to presume it will now. "I do not understand why-"

"-Do you really want me to tell you why we need you to watch her for a few days?"

Standing in their home, with the bag his mother packed for him when he himself had refused to put his clothes into it, he had not understood her insistence he leave her and his father alone. Now as an adult, he finds that despite the curiosity of his younger self, there was a certain refuge in that ignorance. He can all too well count the number of years since he was similarly sent away from home. "I would prefer that you did not."

"Me too," she says with a finality that is immediately followed a far gentler plea. "It's just this once. The next time, she'll be fifteen and more than capable of taking care of herself."

Internally, Spock balks at the mention of there being a next time and has to repress the accompanying grimace. A useless reaction, as his mother continues in her reasoning, ignorant of the reaction her words stirred or simply so determined to sway him that she does not pay mind to it.

"Really, it's a chance for you two to bond," she says.

"We are bonded."

"A little family time would be good for you."

He is certain the matter has already been decided, and probably was so before his mother called him, and yet he says, "As you and father are already intending a visit in only a few days, it is already-"

"-It is already so convenient that you'll get even more time with your sister," his mother says in a tone that signals, despite Spock's continued displeasure with the result of the conversation, he is correct that her mind is set. He swallows the sigh that threatens.

Outside his door, the corridor is entirely empty. The building is likely similarly unoccupied, except for him. It will be for some time, so that his return to his office over the days of the Academy's academic recess will be met with the peculiar sort of vacancy reserved for normally bustling spaces.

A solitude he had quite looked forward to, as illogical as such expectancy is.

"When?" he asks, sweeping aside the threat of disappointment.

"She'll be arriving on the 0837 shuttle from Shi'Kahr tomorrow morning," his mother says, her tone losing its persistence, that unrelenting note replaced instead with briskness.

Only hours from now. He presses his lips together. "Mother-"

"-It's a bit of a rush, Spock."

This time, the grimace slips through. "Please do not provide further details."

His mother's soft laugh is entirely unnecessary. "We'll see you soon. And- Spock, thank you."

A needless explosion of air sits at the top of his throat. "It is no matter."

For some time he continues to stand at the window. The very edge of the quad is visible, what is typically a sliver of green grass now packed with swarms of students. Most have removed their jackets, piles of red fabric dotting the lawn, so that many of the figures are half clad in their pressed slacks or skirts and half in the gray standard issue undershirts typically worn beneath. More than a few have also removed their boots, and Spock can only picture the marks left on the synthetic leather by dropping them on the ground, when just that morning the students would have polished those same boots to a high shine for the beginning of the day.

Unnecessary for them to even consider the time it will take to once again produce a suitable appearance in uniform, as they have no commitments until the beginning of the next semester. There is sufficient time for them to thoroughly relax, as they apparently intend to, what with the empty days stretched out ahead.

When he returns to his seat, he attempts to summon his earlier equanimity, sorting through the stacks of filmplasts he was shuffling, arranging his desk for the end of the day, and finally, when his thoughts threaten to drift towards tomorrow, reaching for his padd. It is inopportune to dwell on the impending disruption, as he has fewer hours now in which to complete his work. Still, he finds himself off kilter with the news of the coming days and with the unbalance his mother's request brings. He cites that perturbation as the reason an eagerness swells in him, as he finally opens Pike's message, followed immediately by an unease that is difficult to quell.

Steeling himself against further emotional response, he reads quickly over Pike's words twice before the sigh that he has held at bay for some time escapes.

The anticipation he holds for the interview is tempered by the day and time in which Pike indicates he is available. Moments ago, Spock would have been attempting to staunch the well of excitement at the opportunity. Now, he has to push back disappointment.

He will reschedule. Surely the Captain will understand a familial obligation, though even as he considers writing out his reply that he can most certainly be available for an interview, just not when the Captain proposed, he assesses being on the receiving end of such a response. It would be unlikely to garner him any favor and could serve to work in an opposite manner. It is a concern he would not have were Pike Vulcan, but Spock has come to learn at least some about his human colleagues, and this appears to be the type of situation where his logic, and their lack thereof, grind discordant against each other. Spock is entirely too able to predict Pike's negative response to a scheduling conflict, inconvenient as it is for him, and boding ill for any positive impression Spock might have made.

Still, he has no choice, no matter how certain he is that Pike will be far from impressed that Spock cannot accommodate him, though such a thought staunches how quickly he might have accepted the Captain's offer. Instead of attempting to immediately compose a reply, he tucks his padd under his arm and palms his comm, sure that given sufficient time, he will land upon a way to respond to the Captain in a manner that makes it clear that his application for the position of First Officer of the _Enterprise_ remains an utmost priority.

Outside, the scent of grilling meat hangs in the air like a cloud. The sun has peeked through the fog, lending a bright cheer to the day. Spock attempts to breathe through his mouth and finds it fortunate that he was planning to launder his uniform that evening, since he will certainly be pressed to do so after walking past the grills a group of fourth years have set out on the quad. He watches the students as they cook, aware as they are that in a matter of days they will graduate, and the next semester will start soon thereafter, with a reordering of students into higher ranks, as they all shift closer to their own commencements. The shuffle of campus has become ordinary by now, a passage of time that once marked Spock's own academic progress and, now that his role as an instructor has stagnated that constant advancement, simply accompanies the turning of the years. He is so used to that inertia as to notice less now than he once had, though the scent of charcoal fires brings back the first steps he took across this quad, when he was attempting to find the tack officer assigned to his cohort of students. That day a fine drizzle had hung in the air, incongruously not enough to temper the human desire to cook outdoors, even given the functioning banks of replicators in the mess hall. Spock's bag had weighed heavy on his shoulder as he had paused at the edge of the quad, teeming with bodies he must pass by. Now, he slips between them with an efficiency he had once not been able to muster, cutting around a group of Tellarites lying prostrate in the sun and a triad of humans kicking a ball between them.

He stops, not at the sound of his name, but the voice that calls it.

"Cadet," he offers as Nyota approaches him. Her jacket is unzipped to the middle of her chest. He is unsure if he has ever seen her bare throat before, hidden as it always is behind the stiff collar of her uniform or the red of her high necked sweaters.

He shifts his padd to his other hand and redirects his gaze across the quad, lest it rest on the collar of her gray t-shirt.

"I'm sorry to have interrupted you," she says. Her head tips slightly, her eyes on him, and her earrings dancing at the motion.

He shakes his head. "It is of no consequence."

He adjusts his grip on his padd again, ready to explain to her all the ways in which her presence was acceptable, but from the ground he hears, "Ny wants to know if you two can start grading right this second."

He clears his throat. Nyota's roommate is laying on the grass, at first glance nearly indiscernible from the lawn and the piles of discarded uniform jackets. An inexcusable oversight on his part, to be so unobservant of his surroundings.

"Hello," he says. Gaila smiles at him, her teeth a bright white flash.

"Stop," Nyota tells her, though the word does nothing to diminish Gaila's apparent delight. "No, sir, I was just hoping to confirm that we were still planning to meet tomorrow morning."

He certainly had been. Awaiting it as one of the last signs of the end of the semester. And in a way that recently he has been hard pressed to attribute only to the help she offers, her efficiency, and the quality of the work she completes.

Firmly, he redirects his thoughts. Given the change in his schedule, completing their work this afternoon would be the most efficacious choice. Technically, her position continues through her final obligation to him and the class, and as neither are completed, he is at his leisure to direct her as he will.

Nearby, music starts. Synthesized and distributed through speakers, so not a live performance. Even so, heads turn in that direction, and there is a yelled demand for increased volume.

He could request her presence now, and she would agree to it with all of her customary respect for her obligations. He looks again at the gathered cadets, her classmates, and instead, he says, "Tomorrow afternoon would be preferable."

"That makes tonight party time," Gaila calls out.

"The morning is no problem at all," Nyota says quickly.

Meeting in the morning would have given them all day together. He searches for a steady tone in which to say, "I am no longer available then."

She lifts her hand, palm towards him. He does not understand the gesture, though her accompanying nod is familiar. "Whatever works best for you."

He is sure that were he human, he would smile at her words, at the incongruity in which they are offered in juxtaposition to his mother's. As it is, he simply returns her nod and after a moment in which he debates whether to say anything further or not, adds, "My sister is visiting. I was not aware until just now."

"Oh." Nyota's smile is sudden and serves to brighten her eyes in a way that cannot help but catch his attention. A correct choice then, to present her with the reason for the change in his schedule. "I didn't know you had a sister."

"I have not mentioned it."

She is still smiling. "That's lovely that she's coming. A bit of a surprise, is it?"

An understatement, to be sure. "Indeed."

"Are you two going to do anything fun?"

He blinks. "Unlikely."

"What Nyota is trying to say is that there's that new bar that opened, and you two should come join us there."

He looks down at where Gaila is grinning at him from beside his boot. "She is eight."

Gaila's mouth tightens in a frown. "No, Ny's like twenty something."

"Eight?" Nyota repeats.

He is so accustomed to what were misunderstandings on Vulcan regarding the differences in their ages, and the surprise on Earth when someone new learns of it, that he simply nods in confirmation, rather than attempting an explanation of any sort.

Then he reconsiders how she is watching him, the smile not quite faded from her expression, and her hands clasped in front of her and confirms, "Yes, she is quite a bit younger than I am."

"Didn't you say your parents are coming, too?"

He had said exactly that, over one of the lunches he had shared with her recently, the ones that had become increasingly common as the semester had worn on and she had begun bringing food to his office, rather than taking the time out of her day to go to the mess hall. Inefficient, really, despite her intention, as it predisposed them to idle discussion, especially when he began taking his meals at the same time. In the end, the time spent eating in his office had become increasingly casual too, in a way he had not been entirely prepared for, as their conversations turned from their work to discussions of her classes, to him recounting stories from his deployments, all with a growing informality that he could not wholly attribute to the practice of eating together.

Regardless, the semester is nearly over. Is over, in actuality, and they have only a number of hours left together to complete their grading.

He resists the urge to shake his head, as if doing so will dispel the thoughts of those lunches, when he should be fully capable of controlling his thoughts without associated gestures. "Later this week. Tabitha is arriving before them."

"Tabitha," Nyota repeats, her smile once again firmly in place. She says it once more in Vulcan, asked as if it is a question, " _T'abeta_?"

As always, her accent is impeccable. "That is correct."

"Will you bring her tomorrow?"

He nearly closes his eyes at the thought, having previously not considered it. Yes, he will likely need to. And he will have to more carefully consider his schedule, rather than allow such oversights for the remainder of the week. "If it is not an inconvenience."

"Oh, no, not at all, that'll be great." Nyota is still smiling. "And really, let me know when you're free tomorrow," she says, and then repeats herself to add, "I'm not up to much of anything until the new semester starts. Just some more data collection."

"Your research is going well, then?"

"Yeah, it is."

"And you are able to recruit sufficient participants?"

"I'm on break," Gaila says, and when he looks down at her, her arm is thrown over her eyes. "So you two need to stop. Please."

"I have," Nyota says as if Gaila has not spoken. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow."

"Acceptable," he says. Not preferable, though, not with the knowledge he now has that she and he will not be alone together.

His rooms are blessedly silent when he arrives. His padd he places on his desk, the order of items there identical to his office, with his padd in its customary spot in the middle, between the assortment of styluses and filmplasts and single framed piece of art. This he stares at for a long moment, the familiar reds and golds of home etched across the paper in short, small strokes.

Then he puts his comm on his kitchen table, removes his uniform, and turns on the sonics in his shower to their highest setting. He stands with his back to them, sure marks will rise to the surface of his skin with the kneading pressure, but he cannot bring himself to care.

Soon he will have to emerge, when the desire to linger is outweighed by the logic of action. Before he retires for the night, he will have to ascertain if he has sheets that will fit his couch and a spare pillow. In his mind, he counts through his towels, certain he has a sufficient number, and pictures his closet with its extra blankets, visualizing the surface area of the warmest one and then the space it will take up on the couch over a small body. He will have to check to make sure it is acceptable, which he will do, as soon as he is finished allowing the sonics to beat into him. He will shake the blanket out, decide if it needs to be washed, and then spend a quiet evening alone. Despite the pleasant temperature of the air outside, he is already certain he will leave his windows closed, lest the noise from campus permeate his quarters. Perhaps the silence can be filled with music of his own, or he could take a last opportunity to meditate in the privacy he is currently afforded that has only hours until it ceases for longer than he wishes now to contemplate.

As he considers the evening before him, and the morning that will come soon enough, he tips his head against the wall of the shower, his thoughts drifting back to the sunlit early evening he just left, the cadets milling about in the warm weather and Nyota standing before him. The tile of his shower is cool against his forehead, and he instructs himself to not dwell upon the shape of her smile, nor how she sought him out, or even the invitation offered by her roommate, the one he would not have likely accepted and now, being unable to, is suddenly all the more attractive.

He had no clear idea what would occur in the days after Nyota's position terminated, only the knowledge of one last meeting to review exams and final grades, and after that a rather aimless intent about what would come next, unclear and, strictly speaking, illogical in the vagueness with which he had allowed himself to consider it. Undirected ideas had begun to circulate in his mind of what might follow thereafter, half formed notions of further lunches, a desire to continue their discussion in the idle hours of the Academy's break, and a surety that he did not wish for the tenuous association they had developed to cease. But now no such opportunity will avail itself, so it does not do to dwell on exactly how those intentions might have solidified, the form they might have taken, how they could have been spurred into realization by an enthusiasm in her that he has to acknowledge would galvanize him, buoy him in further expectations, the types of which he has not allowed himself to consider.

Likely it is for the best that no clear intent ever took shape, best left to the indistinct speculation over what tomorrow might have brought, were he at his leisure to pursue it.

He is not, so he does not linger over the thought of a set of events that may not have occurred in the first place and now certainly will not. Instead, he turns off the sonics, takes a towel from its hook and wraps it around his waist. He steps from the shower with the intention of deciding what task he will begin with first, rather than allow his mind to wander yet again.

* * *

 _11/21/16: So many thanks to give! First off, buckets of gratitude to wifebeast-s for the huge amount of help beta reading, she is truly astounding. Second, thanks to everyone on tumblr who helped name Tabitha- I cannot for the life of me find the post in question, so I can't thank you by name, but if it's you a) amazing job and b) let me know! And thank you to Sam for helping me name Spock's grandmother, and thank you to all of you who were so enthusiastic about this story what was now months and months ago. I'm so excited to share the rest of it with you!_


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttle is late. Spock straightens when his shoulder threatens to rest against the wall he stands next to. Once more, he considers taking a seat among the others waiting at the shuttle port terminal. He would, but to seat himself would be a capitulation to the delay. Instead, he adjusts his stance, reviews the arrivals monitor once again, and then studies the tarmac, as if the shuttle might have arrived without an accompanying announcement.

It is needless to stare out those windows, but the prick in his mind that portents Tabitha's nearness has him restless, the long muted bond that lingers as a low hum at the edge of his consciousness now flaring bright, like something just out of the edge of his vision that he cannot quite catch sight of.

Again, he turns on the screen of his padd, refreshes his inbox, and waits for it to load, only to have it return no new messages. The action was illogical the first time and subsequent iterations have not increased in rationality through repetition.

There is but one shuttle scheduled for this gate, and one planet it originates from, a fact clearly discernible, if not by the overhead monitor, then by the makeup of the group around him. The others waiting at the same arrival gate stand stock still or sit with padds in their laps, their robes neatly draped around them, and no propensity towards fidgeting. For once, the ratio of humans to Vulcans is what it might be at home, the odd individual dotting the crowd, marked by their dress, their hairstyle, how they sit with legs crossed or kicked out in front of them in an unimaginable casualness.

In his uniform, the recycled air is uncomfortably cool. Spock tucks his padd at the small of his back, his hands firmly clasped around it.

A number of small groups engage in conversation among themselves. He recognizes more than one Vulcan in the waiting area and likely, were he to shift his stare from the monitor, would find himself compelled to greet them. At his back, he thumbs the control to his padd, powering it down. As he did not send a response to Pike, it does not follow that he would receive another communication from him. He has one drafted, a suggestion of a number of other times he is available neatly listed out and an entreaty that the Captain choose at his own convenience, and yet when he had his finger hovering over the button to send the reply, he had hesitated.

But he will consult his schedule when he reaches his office and reconfirm his class schedule for the following semester, as well as his parents' travel plans to ensure that a scheduling conflict will not arise twice. It would be better to be certain than to be hasty, though even so, he does not find any comfort in such fact, certain that despite the urge to avoid impulsivity he likely should have sent his response already.

It is no matter. He is not going to do so now and is expecting no other messages, so he does not further adjust his grip on his padd and simply continues to study the monitor. When he is tempted to once more lean his weight on the wall, he forces himself further upright, sure he does not want to attract any more attention than his Starfleet uniform and insignia already draw to him.

En masse, the crowd shifts when the monitor finally blinks from _delayed_ to _arriving_. Humans may be tempted to press around the door, a needless throng that passengers must then push through. As it is, the other Vulcans simply continue to wait. Spock remains where he is at the back of the crowd, watching the first passengers disembark. Those who have an acquaintance meeting them are greeted at the gate with an exchange of _ta'als_ , while others disappear past Spock and into the terminal without pausing at the assembled crowd. If he were to turn to watch, he would be able to soon see them be lost to the shift of pedestrians outside the transport station entrance, slipping away into the city beyond.

He does not allow his attention to be borne away by the pull of idle intrigue. Instead, he keeps his eyes forward and only moves when a break in the crowd reveals a passenger several heads shorter than the rest and markedly alone.

Tabitha has grown taller. She no longer reaches to his waist but rather considerably higher and her hair, once cut to her chin, is now coiled in a style the type of which he has never seen her wear before. He had known via their conversations over his subspace monitor that she had ceased to wear it as she had when she was younger, but seeing her now puts him in mind of their mother's hands twisting through it, arranging dark hair into a neat, long braid, one serviceable for travel. 

Just beyond the doorway, she sets her bag at her feet, the strap still held in both hands, and stands there stock still, the passengers a swirl of movement around her. More than one alters their course in order to step past.

He slips his padd under his arm and moves forward, cutting through the crowd. She does not see him immediately, scanning the others that stand there waiting, but her search cants too far in the wrong direction to spot him until he is nearly close enough to call out.

He is not forced to, as she finally sees him, their eyes meeting and holding as he closes the last of the distance between them.

"Greetings," he offers, lifting his hand in a _ta'al,_ as the crackle static of their bond flares like a spark on a live wire. Spock immediately staunches it, wrestling the blaze of her consciousness aside until it is little more than a flicker, the curtailment only delayed by how foreign the act is, so long has it been since he has had to cushion his thoughts from another.

A couple with a young child step around them. One of their bags brushes against Spock's arm. Tabitha releases her grip on the strap of her bag to return the gesture, the motion abbreviated with how quickly she again grasps the strap.

Her jacket is fastened to her chin, and she briefly pushes her mouth into it before lifting her face far enough to say, "Hello."

Another passenger pushes past. Her shoulder shrinks from the proximity.

He takes a step backwards, but the motion hardly prompts her to follow.

"Was your flight acceptable?" he finally asks, when she has still not moved.

Again, Tabitha has to lift her mouth from her collar to speak. "Yes."

Across the room, a standard safety announcement blares suddenly, the noise blanketing out the hum of greetings and din of conversation. Her chin tucked into her jacket, Tabitha looks from side to side, the fabric of her collar pushing out slightly as she turns. Carrying what must be a _ka'athrya_ in a protective case, another passenger approaches. When Spock steps aside to make room for him to pass, Tabitha still does not follow, though her eyes do, tracking Spock as he attempts to create enough space for the other passenger to pass unencumbered.

"Come," he instructs and it is only after the _ka'athrya_ bearing passenger has moved past them that she shuffles forward, her bag dragging across the ground behind her. Around them, the crowd is diminishing, pairs and trios making for the exit, though the greater ease of movement compels no increase in speed on Tabitha's part.

At her hesitancy, he reaches for the strap she is still holding tight to, only to have her shake her head. Strands of hair that have worked their way loose shift against her cheeks. Instead of relinquishing the bag to him, she shoulders it, both hands needed to pull it high enough to clear the floor and even then, the weight of it knocks into her knees.

Spock turns to look at the front of the terminal, the slice of street beyond the doors, and then back at her. "We are walking to campus."

Tabitha nods.

"It is six blocks."

Her chin remaining in her coat collar, she nods again.

Spock does not sigh. "That is not too heavy for you to carry?"

Her chin lifts. "It is not." And then, "I have to use the restroom."

He waits for what is long enough that he flicks his comm open and considers contacting Cadet Uhura with a request that they meet even later, though having already changed their schedule once, he is not inclined to make that particular call. Instead, he closes his comm with a snap. He does not turn on the screen of his padd.

As it is, when Tabitha reappears, he considers the stands of air taxis and the traffic, the bus schedule he long ago committed to memory, and the hills between them and campus.

"Please be efficient," he prompts as he leads her across the street, turning back to ensure she is following him and nearly once again reaching for the bag that hits her thigh with each step.

Tabitha stops repeatedly to look around her, first at the facade of a building they pass and next at the sight of two dogs being walked, both pulling on their leashes in an exuberance that is only tempered by the woman holding them back. The last time Tabitha was here, Spock was in his dress uniform and the city was packed with the teeming masses of graduating cadets and their newly arrived families, his own among them. Then, he had seen little of her, award ceremonies and farewells to classmates filling the time he had available. His memory of those days center mostly on one lunch he had sat down to with her and their parents, before Sarek's attention was necessitated at the Federation assembly in Paris and Tabitha and Amanda had joined him there, halfway across the planet but far enough they might have already been home in Shi'Kahr.

That next morning, a quiet office had awaited him, the half written code of the Kobayashi Maru staring back from a monitor, his classmates shipping out on their first assignments and his fingers poised over the keypad as campus had slowly emptied out of the families that still remained. Aunts, uncles, cousins, some of his classmates with more siblings than he had known to expect. Illogical, he had thought, there in his new office, silence wrapping around him. Thoroughly without reason, to weigh down so many others with such extravagant festivities.

Spock casts a look down at Tabitha, her chin still tucked into her coat and her hands disappearing into her sleeves where she has tugged the cuffs down past her fists. "Did you bring gloves?"

She shakes her head without looking up. Perhaps their mother had presumed the weather, fair as it is, would be warmer today. Though if so, it would be an uncharacteristic oversight, what with Amanda's attention to Tabitha's needs.

Spock does not allow for a reason as to why such negligence might have occurred to come to mind, certain he does not need to consider any cause for disorganization, for hurry.

"They are not needed," he hears so softly that had a hover car zipped past them then, he might not have noticed. As it is, Tabitha does not look up from where she is studying a man carrying an iced coffee, the straw bobbing in the murky liquid and his attention on his comm. Spock palms his own, again considering the distance to campus and begins to walk faster.

"This way," he instructs when they finally reach the first Academy buildings, steering Tabitha down a path that runs along the edge, past the Engineering building and T'Elah Hall.

"Where are we going?"

"My office."

"Mother said that classes are not in session."

"As I am not a student, that hardly affects my own schedule." He had requested his parents schedule their upcoming visit for the weekend and had not requested additional days as some of his colleagues make a habit of, what with how they take advantage of the lull between semesters. Spock has no need to do so and finds the quieter pace of campus refreshing after the bustle of the term, a chance to focus on work that otherwise would have to be slotted in among meetings, classes, and the myriad of other commitments that typically fill his days. Of course, as he waits for Tabitha to catch up with him before beginning to walk towards the Xenolinguistics building once again, he is not exactly at his leisure now, as he might have anticipated only this time yesterday.

Around him, such changes in schedules do not seem to plague the few cadets milling about the mostly empty edge of campus they have reached. From here, he can see the areas of lawn on the slice of the quad that is visible, the grass trampled after the impromptu celebration of the previous afternoon and the small knots of instructors where they have come together in conversation, pausing today as they might not during the rush of the semester. Even at this distance, and even with so few others about, Tabitha cannot help but stand out, tucked into her coat as she is and the bulk of her bag hanging from her shoulder, the strap held once again in both of her hands.

He tries once more. "I can carry that for you."

She pulls the strap higher but does not release her bag to him. "I would like to call Mother and Father."

"Now?" He cannot help but turn in the direction of the Xenolinguistics building, still a significant distance away given their pace thus far. "I have a meeting."

"I called home from the shuttle but neither answered and I wish to try again."

"It is not a convenient time." For anyone except perhaps Tabitha, a sentiment that he does not voice. Instead, he takes a step towards their destination, only to have her not follow. He is not particularly disposed to a discussion of what prevented Amanda's attention to her comm. "Tabitha, please."

"Mother said she would like to know when I arrived and as I have now been on Earth for-"

"-She will have seen that you called and can infer that having dropped out of warp, your communicator was once again functional."

"As I did not leave a message, it would be prudent to specify the reason for my call."

"She can logically deduce that-" He stops himself. A rational argument has never been of any use, so it would not follow that now would be any different. "When we reach my office, you can leave her a message."

They make it thirty more meters before Tabitha again stops walking. "-Why would I have to leave a message?"

"Please come along."

"How can you anticipate she will not answer?"

"Tabitha-"

"-I am hungry."

He draws in a breath. One that he does not let out as forcefully as he would like. "You are hungry now?"

Brown eyes stare up at him. "That is what I said."

"Did you not eat on the shuttle?" he asks.

"No."

"Can you wait until my meeting has concluded?"

"No," she repeats.

He shifts his padd to his other hand, turning from Tabitha towards the Xenolinguistics building and back to her again, her shoulders hunched against the relative coolness of San Francisco and her bag still slung from her shoulder. The wind and their walk has worked loose even more strands of her hair. They lay dark against her cheek, just before her ears. Never overly fastidious in her appearance, he doubts that even if she knew, she would brush them back. Indeed, the front of her shoes are scuffed, red dirt worked into the toes and more still clinging to the hem of her pants. Too clearly he can imagine her sent outside while Amanda quickly packed for her, Tabitha told to enjoy the freedom to run about before a long shuttle trip; an excuse to have her out of the house, away from doors shut tight and barred.

Such a ploy had once worked on Spock, and even now he can remember the roll of small, smooth stones in his hand as he had dawdled on the veranda, picking at the _kal-toh_ board and the half played game abandoned there. Sybok had promised to return to finish it, though memory now fails him as to whether the board had already been put away when Spock had finally returned from Earth, or if it had not simply sat there for longer, untouched and cleaned up at an even later date.

Tabitha again hitches her bag higher on her shoulder. Spock considers the length of time lunch will take when consumed at the rate Tabitha typically completes tasks, the hours of work he has to complete, and finally opens his comm.

"Hi," Nyota answers nearly immediately.

For a moment, he allows himself the thought that he has called her simply for the pleasure of conversation. "How was the remainder of your evening?"

"You know what finals are like?" Nyota asks. Beside him, Tabitha's brow creases. He shifts slightly away. Without waiting for an answer, Nyota supplies, "As absolutely different as possible."

Tabitha's eyes are on his comm in his hand. He turns his shoulder to her. It his hardly the first time he has found the public nature of conversations held on Starfleet's comms nettlesome. "Suitably enjoyable, then."

If her laugh is not confirmation enough, she adds, "It was pretty nice."

With his attention on the direction of the Xenolinguistics building and not on how Tabitha continues to watch him, he tells her, "Perhaps fortunately, you may be at your leisure to continue the head start on your leave between semesters."

"Family time?"

He looks down at Tabitha only to look away again. She continues to peer at him. "I am perhaps less available today than I had otherwise anticipated."

"Oh, of course, take all the time you need."

"I do not wish to inconvenience you," he says. He considers his words in the face of her break from her studies. A much needed vacation, he is sure, what with how diligently she works during the semester. "If you would like to be done earlier, you are welcome to begin."

No matter that he will not then see her. Inconsequential. Unimportant. An easily dismissed thought, that.

"No, it's fine actually," she says. "I'm more than happy to wait and do it with you."

He begins to shake his head. Then, he looks down at Tabitha and halts the motion before it can begin. "There is no need."

"I-" She clears her throat. "I'll wait."

He refuses to let relief rise through him. Or the upswell of gratification. "Tomorrow, then?"

"I'm free all day."

"Excellent."

There is a pause in which he is sure he should say goodbye, though he does not, his gaze still on the path to the building in which they are currently supposed to be meeting, the one they have by now spent so many hours in together that it seems to be intrinsically associated with her, the shape of his office and her presence there with him linked inexorably in his mind.

The intake of air is clear through the comm connection when she quickly inhales. "Listen, yesterday when I came by, I also wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed the semester with you." She laughs softly, though at what he does not know. "I kind of forgot to tell you that when I saw you, so."

Further completion to her sentence does not come, not with how he waits for it, his eyes scanning across the parts of campus he can see from his vantage point.

Twice now, they have stood just there on the steps to the library, the corner of the building facing him. They had spoken at length as other cadets and instructors headed to dinner at the end of their days, but she and he lingered, finishing their conversation as time ticked obliviously onward.

He nods. "Likewise."

"So," she says again, her voice once more tinged through with formality, losing the quiet of her previous statement. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Enjoy the remainder of your day."

"Yeah, you too. Have fun together."

An illogical statement to be sure, but even as she disconnects the call he feels no urge to correct her.

"Who was that?"

Spock flicks his comm closed. He does not look at Tabitha. "We must go to the market, unless replicated food is suitable."

Tabitha does not move. He knows, even as he looks down the path that cuts across campus, that she is continuing to watch him. "Mother says you have a cadet."

"Pardon?"

"That you have a cadet working for you of whom you frequently speak. Was that her?"

"What would you like to eat?" By the time they sit down to it, the meal will be later than a lunch, and at the speed at which the rest of the day has passed, it might well qualify as an early dinner. " _Pok tar_?"

" _Klitanta s'mun t'forati_."

"No."

"Mother had promised to make it tonight."

 _Klitanta s'mun t'forati_ requires thirteen ingredients, six of which are not available on Earth. Of course mother would have promised something of that sort, a complicated and favorite meal before a trip off planet, one of their last nights to eat on the table tucked into the corner of the veranda as the sun slipped behind the mountains, casting the cliffs and jutting rocks in deep golds and pinks.

Again, he looks down at the dirt clinging to Tabitha's shoes. "I can make you _pre tarmeeli_."

Tabitha's eyes narrow as she considers before she nods once, short and abrupt. "Acceptable."

"Come," he says again and this time without the pressing constraint of a meeting, he guides her in the direction of the grocery store at a more sedate pace. Still, he turns once to look out across campus like he might recognize any of the figures walking there, though they are too distant, writ too small against the backdrop of buildings and paths and lawns that he leads Tabitha from.

…

The rain begins on their return from the market, soaking into the bag Spock balances in the bend of his elbow. Palm up, Tabitha holds her hand out from where she has retreated under the eve of his building, water pouring from the awning above them to splatter against her fingers and pool in her palm before she tips her hand to let it dribble out. She immediately repeats the process, mindless of the door Spock is blocking from shutting with his foot, lest it slide closed between them.

A wet palm print mars the front of her jacket when she finally wipes her hand off and follows him inside, their footsteps echoing through the lobby to the turbo lift, where he presses the button to his floor. The bag crooked in his arm drips water onto his sleeve and he ineffectually wipes the screen of his padd off, juggling it and the groceries. His comm, kept tucked into his palm, remained dry and he flicks it open only to close it again when the lift doors open.

"Here," he says, stopping halfway down the hallway when Tabitha, still examining the wet that clings to her hands and clothes, threatens to continue walking. Inside, his apartment is favorably warm, heat edging away the chill that had taken up residence in him, laid there by the breeze that had kicked up off the water as they walked from the store. Here, wind doesn't flatten his clothes, and the only entry of rain into his quarters is the smack of drops against the window and the wet boot prints left as he toes off his shoes and Tabitha does the same beside him, shrinking even further in stature in sock-clad feet.

A noise turns his attention from where he sets the groceries in their appropriate place, a shuffle of padds and the click of them being rearranged. "Do not."

Tabitha's hands return to her side and she looks at him over her shoulder from where she is standing before his bookshelf. She remains there as he resumes unpacking the grocery bag, and he tracks her on the periphery of his vision when her progress around the room restarts with an examination of the objects on his coffee table and then the table itself. It is an oddity for any Vulcan household and yet provided with the other furnishings of his apartment when he had first arrived.

He had judged the effort to remove it as more burdensome than its continued presence, though he remains uncertain as to whether it truly serves any purpose, as he is perfectly capable of setting his belongings on the table that sits adjacent to his couch, or the desk in the corner of the room. Furthermore, its very existence only ever serves to remind him of one of his few visits to their grandmother's house as child, when he had asked after the benefit of unnecessary furniture. Instead of providing any useful answer, his grandmother had continued to implore his parents to ensure that he did not strike his head on the corner of her own coffee table, despite the fact that he was significantly taller than the object. It had only had solidified his opinion of the furnishing as both useless and a potential hazard, though why he would walk into it of his own accord he had never determined.

Tabitha had been far from a consideration back then. His classmates had their own families enlarged by subsequent siblings, but when his parents made no mention of a similar impending arrival, Spock had spent his childhood presuming he and Sybok would be alone in their status of offspring. Sarek's offspring, rather. A distinction never lost on Spock, even when Sybok had come to live with them.

As it were, Spock was absent from Tabitha's own first visit to Seattle, deployed on an introductory training mission that first year at the Academy when his family had finally found time to visit Earth. So he does not know if similar concerns were afforded to Tabitha's interaction with the table. It would be likely, despite Spock's successful navigation of the environment, as their grandmother had never possessed any particular inclination towards logic. And surely had Sybok ever come to Earth, a trip he had never made, Spock is certain it would be a warning issued in triplicate.

"You have this," Tabitha says.

He completes slicing through a _k'vass_ before he turns, and then resumes chopping it into even cubes when he sees what she is holding.

"That should be obvious." He waits for the sounds of her replacing the framed picture on the desk, already sure he will have to adjust it back to its proper place. "Those padds contain my students' papers. Please do not read them."

"Why?"

"They are none of your concern."

"What is this?"

Again, he pauses, the knife suspended above the cutting board. "A syllabus I am preparing for the coming semester," he answers when she waves a filmplast towards him.

"What is Interspecies Ethics?"

"Did you not bring school work with you?" He scrapes the _k'vass_ into a waiting pan. "A book of your own?"

"Why do individuals of different species need to be taught to be ethical?"

"They lack a propensity for logic." He crosses the room in a handful of strides, removing the filmplast from her grip and insinuating himself between her and his desk. "Please find alternative entertainment than the perusal of my belongings."

"Where is your subspace communication monitor?" she asks, only to find the screen on the desk as soon as the question has left her. She slips around him and turns the screen on, her fingers a quick tap as she keys in the only code that he has ever called from it. Assuming neither of their parents have moved their own array since he was last home, the monitor in the study of their house is currently pinging with an accompanying flash of the indicator light.

It will ring to an empty room, the silence of which echoes in the quiet that Spock and Tabitha stand, her eyes fixed on the screen and his hands behind his back before he finally reaches over her head and presses the button to disconnect the call, lest it continue to chime into emptiness.

"They are occupied," he says and maintains the control necessary to keep his mind strictly blank as to exactly how.

"I wish to speak to them."

"I am aware." Not only from her repeated insistence, but the look she fixes him with. The determination that her expression carries is certainly intended to induce him to remedy the problem, and if he were not certain that urgency is underlying her look, the snap that arcs between them nicks at the edge of his thoughts, a bright blaze of her tenacity. He is hardly accustomed to the need to sheild his thoughts. Carefully neutral, he says, "They will answer when they are able."

He shuts the monitor off entirely with what he intends as some finality, but it only serves to leave her looking at the dark screen, her hands loose at her sides.

"The food will be ready soon," he offers and while her eyes slide away from the monitor, the news does little to spur her to any action beyond that.

It is only when he has returned to stirring the simmering _k'vass_ that she moves, drawing back a chair from the table, the one he typically makes use of as it is the most pleasingly situated, with a view out the window near it. From there, he can see the tops of trees, while the other chairs face either a wall or the interior of his apartment. For a moment he holds a spoon above the pot. Then, he resumes his task, his back to her and only the sounds of bubbling _pre tarmeeli_ and the rustle of the paper she sets out on his table filling the room.

By the time he places two steaming bowls on the table, three of her pencils have rolled to the floor and the remainder of her belongings have crept across the surface in a march he well recognizes from his visits home, so that he is forced to move two sheets of paper and an eraser to make room for their dinner.

"Is that a _le-mataya_?"

She whisks her drawing from the table so quickly that it flutters a nearby sheet. "No."

Their father would have bought her the paper, an indulgence presented with the other supplies that Sarek routinely furnishes her with. The few times Spock has been back to the house in Shi'Kahr, the table in the kitchen had been covered with piles of paper and pens and brushes, all precisely arranged in an order that he could not discern, Tabitha's fingers smudged with color that was worn into the heel of her hand and pressed into her nail beds.

She pulls her spoon through the bowl in front of her slowly. He pauses with his own spoon halfway to his mouth to ask, "What, then, were you drawing?"

A slight crease appears between her brows. Her hair remains disordered, strands threatening to fall into her face. "This is not the way Mother prepares _pre tarmeeli_."

"This preparation is far more efficient."

"It will not taste the same."

"You said that you were hungry."

Slowly, she takes a single bite, replacing her spoon alongside her bowl as she chews. Dipped into her meal as it has been, it leaves a smear of broth on the table.

He is accustomed to the absence of conversation during a meal, though the silence is rendered far starker by having another sitting at his table with him. Amanda had long since banished the Vulcan tradition of avoiding discussion over a meal, announcing it needless and, in her opinion, illogical. The vehemence of her declaration had made clear to both Sarek and Spock that they would do well to agree with her conclusion, and neither had stated the fact that opinion or no, logic was immutable. Still, even with the routine dialogue his mother insisted on, Spock had found the difference between meals taken at school and those he ate at home jarring, finding solace only in the inverse upon becoming an instructor and being afforded his own quarters, shared meals loud and distracting in the Academy's mess hall, and pleasantly quiet when he returns to his apartment each evening.

Tabitha's spoon taps against the side of her bowl. For some time, she examines the pool of broth in her spoon, making no move to eat it.

"Mother said you have switched schools," Spock finally says and her eyes rise from her meal to meet his.

Then, she bends forward quickly, her spoon pushed into her mouth. "That is correct."

He waits for her to give an opinion on the change, though she remains silent, examining a piece of shredded _plomeek_ before carefully eating it.

"You are now at the Shi'oren Interspecies School?" he asks. Needless, as he knows the answer.

Logical, then, for Tabitha to not answer. Surely she heard their mother tell him, a conversation that recounted nearly every available detail of Tabitha's academic trials and yet left Spock somehow still with further inquiries. Which is attributable to a natural curiosity, he is certain. He attended but one school in Shi'Kahr, and though Tabitha apparently found it lacking, he had never been prevailed upon to change institutions, nor had he sought out the option himself, so he hardly knows of the differences Tabitha is now experiencing, or possible similarities.

Though he is certain there are few, if any.

He begins to ask further details only to stop himself. He is not certain he truly wishes to know.

After dinner, he places the uneaten remainder of her meal in the status chamber in his kitchen and the excess he had cooked but not served in a matching container next to it. As he cleans, Tabitha returns to her drawing, kneeling on the chair so she can better lean over the table and her head ducked down, unmoving even when he passes by her.

Her attention pulled away, it leaves him to his own pursuits, constrained as they are by her presence. Eventually, he sits on his couch beside the small pile of bedding he had collected and balances his padd on his knees. He spends some time returning messages, the banality of the task interrupted tonight by Tabitha shifting in her chair, the scratch of her pencil across her paper twice pulling his attention.

Near the top of his inbox, below the as yet unanswered missive from Captain Pike, sits a series of messages Nyota sent him in the previous days. Glancing up to ensure Tabitha remains diverted, he opens the first, a paper she had sent him on Tellarite verb usage that he had read immediately upon receipt. It had come on the heels of a rather lively debate over the nature of comparative xenosociological theory, and the reply he had written sparked a second conversation, this one held over mugs of tea that she had brought to his office for - as she had stated with a smile pulling at her mouth - a recognition of the logic of the argument he had constructed but not the capitulation of her original point. The other message is in regards to a question a student posed to her in the wake of one of Spock's lectures, and the next the original communication he had sent over finding a time to meet to grade the final papers. One more look towards Tabitha confirms that if he were so inclined, he could start grading now, as she is unlikely to offer herself as a distraction, though even as he glances at the padds that await his attention, the call with Nyota comes to mind, her insistence that she wait for him quelling any urge to begin without her.

"Tabitha," he says and when she does not acknowledge him, repeats her name a second time.

"Yes?" she finally says, only slowly raising her focus from the paper in front of her.

"I am going to reschedule my meeting for tomorrow."

She turns back around. "Understood."

He begins a new message to Nyota, offering her a selection of times the following morning, for whichever is convenient for her, and a suggestion they meet in his office, which is likely needlessly specific, but perhaps prescient, with the increasing amount of time they have spent in other places on campus, as twice now she has approached him in the library and joined him there for an afternoon, and once they walked back from the gym together. She had repeatedly adjusted how the straps of her shirt had laid over her shoulders, bare as they were otherwise. It would have been distracting, had he not been occupied with the fact he had just submitted his application to Pike and had gone to the gym as a way to manage the excess agitation the day had left him with, cooped up at his desk, as he had repeatedly reread the accompanying cover letter that he had rewritten twice, in an attempt for perfection and the aspiration for an interview.

Now Spock faces the entirely possible fact that given the difficulty of Spock's schedule, Pike will decline to adjust his own.

Again, he looks towards Tabitha and then calculates the time that has elapsed since Pike sent him the offer. Tabitha's pencil continues to scratch over the paper, and she shifts in her seat, drawing one leg up, the bottom of her foot now on the chair and her chin on her knee as she continues her as-yet unidentified drawing. Though it must be a _le-mataya_ , for no other animal possesses a similar shape.

"Tabitha," he says again and this time does not wait for her to look at him. "I have a second meeting this week, before Mother and Father arrive."

Her braid dragging across her back in a nod is his only acknowledgement. He rereads the message to Nyota before he sends it, then immediately writes to Pike as well. He similarly submits the message before he can decide otherwise, attempting for a measure of resolve in his chosen course of action.

He does not allow himself to think that such resolve is likely entirely unsuccessful.

Regardless, he does not allow himself to refresh his inbox, instead picking up a padd containing a part of the Kobayashi Maru's code, complex enough to ideally serve as a suitable avenue for his focus.

That night, Tabitha approaches him as he tucks a sheet around the couch cushions.

He pauses. Bent over as he is, they are nearly eye-level. "I do not have a second bed for you."

Still, she hovers. "That is not what I wished to inquire."

He waits, the cushion lifted and the sheet threatening to slip before he finally resumes the task. He tugs the sheet tight and smooth, the neatness with which he arranges it pleasing.

"What, then?" he asks.

When she continues to stand there silently, he shakes out a blanket and settles it over the couch. "If you need to raise the environmental controls, you may."

"I am not tired," she says.

"Then do not go to sleep," he suggests. He watches her take in the transformed couch. "Do you require an additional pillow?"

"Why did neither Mother nor Father answer?"she asks and the corner of her mouth tightens so slightly that he is willing to attribute it to a trick of the light.

"They are not currently available," he says. A simple explanation, and succinct.

"Why?"

"As I said previously, they are occupied." He hands her a pillow and an accompanying pillow case. "Please be of assistance."

She holds both at her sides, one in each hand as she stares up at him. "In what manner?"

At a loss, Spock asks, "Did Mother not explain?"

"She said-" Tabitha sets the pillow on the coffee table and simply looks at it for a moment. "Father did not say goodbye to me and Mother intimated that he is ill."

"That is accurate," Spock says in a way that he intends as phlegmatic, only to find that Tabitha's brows draw together.

"How ill?"

"It is nothing of any concern."

"Then why do they not answer my calls?"

"When you were ill with Denubian flu, Mother focused solely on your care." It was the same week as his entrance exams for the Vulcan Science Academy. Sarek had been in the kitchen that morning when Spock had come downstairs, expecting his mother but finding her still in Tabitha's room. That breakfast had passed in silence, the _smertau_ bugs chirping in the garden the only accompaniment to the crunch of _krei'la_ as Spock had chewed, the noise grating after a night of too little sleep, hours spent restless in anticipatory nervousness he had been at a loss to staunch, and one exacerbated in the morning light by the certainty Sarek was clearly aware.

"I was young, I do not remember," Tabitha says.

"They will be here soon," Spock says as steadily as he can.

"How do you know that it will not delay their travel?"

"The… course of his illness will have passed," Spock says, resisting the urge to allow the distaste at voicing such an explanation to cross his features. "You need not worry."

"I am not worried," Tabitha says. In her hand, the pillow case crumples in small folds as her grip tightens. "I am simply seeking a logical explanation."

"They will be here soon," Spock repeats, at a loss for what else to offer.

At some length, Tabitha picks up the pillow again, placing one corner of it into the pillow case and attempting to stuff the remainder of it in after, her small hands ineffectively pushing at the down. Spock takes it from her, her protest coming in the sharp movement of her eyebrow that remains raised even when he hands it back, each corner of the pillow neatly apportioned in its proper place within the case.

"Perhaps," he says as she holds it in front of her, turning it this way and that before simply crossing her arms over it, instead of placing it on the couch. "If you are not fatigued, you could write to them. I am certain that when Mother is able, she will share your letter with Father."

Indents form in the pillow from Tabitha's hold on it. "I did not bring my padd." She shakes loose strands of hair out of her eyes, an ineffectual motion with her hands held tight to the pillow. "I could not find it, and it was time to leave for the shuttle port."

"Do not avail yourself of my personal communications," Spock instructs and leaves Tabitha perched on the edge of the couch, his own padd balanced on her knees and her face bathed in blue light as he dims the lamps for the night.

Alone in his room, he lights his meditation candle and arranges himself on the floor in front of it, clearing his mind of thoughts as he studies the flicker of the flame, the familiar shapes of the shadows it casts on the wall. His breathing evening out and his body growing still, he attempts to ignore the tapping of Tabitha's fingers on the padd in the other room, and so too the pull of her thoughts against his, unobtrusive other than the fact of their presence.

When he finally arises, the sound has stopped. He would typically spend the remainder of his evening reading or perhaps practicing his _ka'athyra_ , his mind unwound from the business of the day and his thoughts free to turn towards the steadying rhythm of leisure pursuits. Tonight, he walks on bare feet back to the main room of his quarters, still awash in a blue glow. Tabitha's hand is spread on the padd, casting a long shadow on the ceiling and illuminating the soft rise and fall of her chest. The message is half complete and unsent. He places the padd within her easy reach, should she awake again. After a moment, he pulls the second blanket from the arm of the couch to lay over her.

Around the room, the unmistakable signs of her presence are clearer than just the small mound of her beneath the blanket, her shoes still drying near the door, dwarfed by his own boots, and her jacket hung beside his own. He straightens both garments, so they will dry evenly, and adjusts her shoes, so that they are parallel and perpendicular to the wall. Her bag he sets closer to her, pulling the sides of it more neatly shut, though he does not fasten it closed. Two of her pens have rolled from his table, and he retrieves them, setting them with the rest of her collection. She has left a stack of paper on his table, the top sheet of which is turned upside down, though the outline of lines of pressure she has left is clear even through its back.

With a look at her on the couch, her breath raising and lowering the blanket, he lifts one corner of the paper, but he can still not determine what animal she depicted. Curious, as her drawings are typically so carefully crafted, nearly anatomically precise in a way that she has only continued to master as she refines her fine motor skills. This, while well rendered and aesthetically appealing, is not an animal he is familiar with, though he maintains it shares a certain resemblance with the _le-mataya_ that scream in the desert at night.

Surely they are doing so even now. Odd to think of them under those familiar stars, stalking through hills so distant. As if his presence on Earth would render theirs at home somehow immaterial. Illogical, at best, and clearly a reason to believe it is time for him to retire as well.

He crosses to the door of his bedroom and with one last look at Tabitha curled as she is on his couch, goes to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

Spock is sorting through the padds on his desk when Tabitha says, "I do not wish to accompany you to your office."

He does not pause, though he supposes he should be thankful that her declaration is not yet another inquiry into whether their mother has responded to the message Tabitha only just sent. "That has not been extended to you as an option."

"Which is why I am now informing you of my desire." Her forehead creases. "Decision, not desire."

"Your preference," he corrects. He searches through the remaining pile on his desk for any other of his students' papers that he needs to bring. "Which is duly noted. Please put your jacket on."

"Your meeting is of no interest to me and therefore I am not coming."

To the stack of padds, he adds a stylus, his comm, and scans the surface of his desk for any other necessary items. "Yes, you are."

"At my age, you had already undertaken your _kahs-wan_ , and therefore, if the ability to be self sufficient in the desert in isolation is any indication, a similar argument can be made for the logic of-"

"-You did not complete a _kahs-wan_." Nor had attempted it, as far as he knows. Their mother would have told him, as is her habit of relating most everything that occurs back on Vulcan that concerns Tabitha, the minutiae of her life explained to him in detail across sixteen light years. His hand on the pile of his belongings, he turns. Tabitha's arms are crossed tight over her chest and she stares up at him, unblinking.

"Your quarters are hardly a perilous environment," she says.

"That is not the pertinent point."

"Then what is?"

From the arm of the couch, he picks up his uniform jacket and ensures his insignia is straight before he puts it on, fastening it as Tabitha watches him, her arms still folded. She does not move when he steps into his boots, nor when he tucks the needed padds beneath his arm.

"I am not coming."

The potential to spend the morning alone with Nyota, with no-one else in the building to disturb them, and certainly not Tabitha, is entirely too alluring. "We are leaving now."

Irritation sparks between them, a reciprocal echo with no beginning and no end, but instead an endless loop that they pass between each other, a nearly palpable arc in the air.

Already, the length of the morning has threatened to once again render him late for his meeting with Nyota, and with Tabitha standing there in her socks, with her jacket still on the hook beside him, the need to call Nyota to once again delay is growing all too real a possibility. Spock tamps down on that flare of annoyance, the bright snap of it that surges back and forth between them until his retreat into his own mind.

"Why do you have to go?" Tabitha asks.

As if the padds in his hand are not clear enough. He does not sigh. "I have professional obligations, regardless of your visit."

"Mother said that you would supply entertaining activities."

He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he asks, "Did she provide suggestions?"

"No."

"Do you have any of your own?"

"No."

"Is there not anything you wish to do?"

"Remain here, as I have informed you." Her arms unfold. A glimmer now, bumping against his mind, silverbright and quick. "Or to see snow."

"San Francisco is too temperate to have snowfall," he says and that growing gleam stagnates, stills in its swell. "And furthermore, it is not the correct season, even if it were."

"I know of Earth's seasons. Therefore, not in San Francisco then." Tabitha raises an eyebrow. "That is the logical deduction."

He takes a breath. "Traveling from the city today is not an option."

For too long, considering the walk still ahead of them, Tabitha simply looks at him. Spock imagines he can hear the hum of her mind, even though her thoughts remain separated from his by the grip he takes on their bond. Still that tie of their minds fizzes bright in the back of his thoughts, normally so dull and dim and now flickering like a shine just beyond the corner of his eye. When she was born, it had rubbed his mind raw, reordered it with the addition of her thoughts alongside those of his own and his parents, an intrusion that extended beyond her wails when his parents paced with her in their arms, attempting to soothe her. That week of her birth, he had completed his exams with his mind tender and abraded, a chafing of his thoughts that he had not been certain would ever ease.

He resists the urge to close his eyes again and says, "I understand you do not wish to come. You are correct that it will hardly be enjoyable for you, and for that I apologize. If you would like, you may bring your drawing materials."

As Tabitha considers the offer before finally turning to his table where her paper and pens still lay, shuffled to the side for their breakfast of plomeek soup, he cannot help but think of his parents' attempts at spurring her along, his own certainty at the age Tabitha is, he would have rather sat quietly for the entirety of a meeting than risk the particular look Sarek would have fixed him with if he rendered their family late. Illogical, to place the needs of one among that of a group of others, though when he had said as much to his mother when Tabitha had once struggled with her shoes, Spock impatient at the door to their house, Amanda had simply smoothed her hand over his shoulder.

Nyota answers his call on the second ring, at the same moment that Tabitha finally decides upon which pens she will bring with her.

"We are a six minutes behind schedule," he says and then adds, "Good morning."

"Good morning to you too," Nyota says and from her voice he is nearly certain that she is smiling. "Slow start to your day?"

"Not to my own day, no."

She laughs, clear and bright, even with half of campus between them.

"Don't worry, this is good. I might have a chance to stop for some tea," she says, though certainly she knows he was not anxious. No, she has never been particularly fastidious about schooling her speech around him as some of his colleagues are, a habit he finds exasperating in others and yet has always excused in her. The paradox is illogical and yet it endures, left unexamined even though that begs its own lack of reason.

"In that case," he says, "I am glad to be of service."

"Do you want some?"

Tucked under his arm, the padds seem as much a harbinger of the end of their work together as does her offer, once an unfamiliar exchange of tea that has grown into a routine that fills his morning as surely as her presence does when he reaches his office, the door ajar and her there waiting for him. "I do. Thank you."

"Does your sister?" Nyota asks. Across the room, Tabitha inspects the tip of a pen, the cap held in her hand.

"Tabitha, would you like a cup of tea?" he asks, only to realize the question is ill-advised, as Tabitha immediately ceases what progress she has made.

Her eyes narrow, the pen still held in her hands. "What variety?"

" _Ch'aal_ is available."

"From where?"

"A cafe." The one on the corner near the Xenolinguistics building where twice he and Nyota have walked on warm evenings. From there, she always departed back to her dorm and her work and the remainder of her day, and he for his quarters, the idea of what it might be to instead linger there with her filling his thoughts as he crossed campus.

"Why?" Tabitha asks.

"Cadet Uhura offered to acquire it for you." It is the obvious reason, which he might have informed her of were Nyota not on the line, or perhaps taken the opportunity of her proximity to nudge that thought against her own, if he were not so certain that continuing to seclude his own at this moment is far preferable.

"I will consider it."

"You must decide now."

"I do not know now."

"And yet a response is required." There is more he could add, though he lets out his breath instead of continuing onwards, and waits, the padds gripped in his hand and a silence emanating from his comm.

"No," Tabitha finally says. Then, her forehead furrows. "Yes, I do."

"Got it," Nyota says, and Tabitha's eyes snap to his comm in his hand, to the place where Nyota's voice emerged. "Three teas. See you soon."

The building is empty when they arrive, the computer turning the lights on in the lobby at his instruction and their footsteps echoing across the tile, Tabitha's a faster patter than his own. While typically the corridor outside of his office teems with students and instructors, today it is unoccupied, and there is nobody but him to watch how Tabitha stops at each door, reading the accompanying name plate and twice taking the opportunity to look into a vacant lecture hall, the seats extending outward in an empty semicircle.

"What is taught here?"

"Comparative Xenosociolinguistics."

"By whom?"

"Lieutenant Calder."

"Where do you teach?"

"Two floors above."

"But your office is here," Tabitha says and, finding his name next to his door, proceeds him into the room.

Nyota is not inside, the lights off and both his and her chairs pushed into their respective desks, their padds and filmplasts set as they were when he last left. The room, decorated and arranged as it is, precisely and in a soothing order, is intended to be calming, a place of concentration. Tabitha lays the armful of her belongings on his desk before rifling through the items that are set upon the surface, the container of styluses, from which she plucks two for inspection, and the memo from the department chair as to the following semester's schedule that she reads, and a note from Nyota left some days ago that he has not yet removed, which she picks up and holds in two hands, her eyes tracking over the few short sentences Nyota had written. He plucks this last object from her and with a hand hovering just above the sharp jut of Tabitha's shoulder blade, steers her from his desk.

It is useless, as she simply alights upon Nyota's work surface, hovering next to it with her hands loosely clasped in front of her, as if at any moment she will seize the mug Nyota keeps there, or the copy of the slides Nyota had helped review before the final lecture he gave the week previous.

She remains until she hears a sound at the door, one that causes Spock to similarly turn. Nyota steps through the door, bearing three cups of tea and a smile. It is typical, all of it - her pause just over the threshold as she greets him, the neat press of her uniform and her hair carefully tied away from her face, her bag hanging from her shoulder, and the tea she extends to him to take, their fingers passing close enough that if he is not careful, he will be tempted to imagine that the heat against his hand is not from the warmth of the liquid but spanned across the air between their skin.

But today, she does not set down her bag immediately, nor does she even move towards her desk, Tabitha standing as she is directly in the way.

"Hi," Nyota offers along with one of the two cups she continues to hold, outstretched towards Tabitha who simply looks first at it and then again at Nyota.

When the silence threatens to stretch, Spock says for both of them, "Thank you."

Slowly, Tabitha reaches for the cup and takes it with one hand placed beneath and one hand over the top of the lid. She has to shuffle her grip on it to set it down on the corner of Spock's desk when she retreats to stand near to his chair.

"I thought you'd take it like your brother does," Nyota says into the quiet. With a dash of _kavaas_ , then, and brewed stronger than is typical. The first time he had specified such, it had prompted a long and winding discussion of very little import that had lasted for the entirety of their lunch break, in which he had learned Nyota's opinions on all manners of tea preparation and exactly what it sounded like when she laughed at a comment he made, her eyes crinkling at the corner and her smile half hidden behind the rim of her mug.

Silent and careful, Tabitha peels back the lid, scrutinizing the liquid inside.

Over Tabitha's head, Nyota's eyes meet his and hold for a moment before she looks down at his sister and then back again, this time with a small smile lifting her mouth.

"That is acceptable," Tabitha says so quietly she might not have bothered at all, replacing the lid and then remaining poised where she is, forcing Spock to step around her to sit and even then she does not move, standing right at his elbow and blocking half of his work surface with her cup and her hands around it.

The rustle of Nyota arranging her own belongings is as familiar as the routine of setting out his padds, and so too is the scrape of her chair across the floor, a grating noise that once bothered him, in those days when she first started her position and he found her presence barely more than an imposition on his time and space. She drops down into her chair and crosses one leg over the other, her hands pulling down the edge of her skirt in a manner that has always struck him as automatic, a mindless motion that she repeats each time she turns to face him as she does now, twisted in her chair with the toe of one boot pressed to the tile floor and the other dangling above.

"So, what have you two been up to?" she asks.

Tabitha takes a sip of her tea, both hands curved around the cup. Spock answers. "Nothing of note."

"An actual day of vacation?" Nyota asks. "Spock, I didn't know you had it in you."

She grins in the immediate aftermath of this comment, as she often does to indicate her use of sarcasm, or the telling of a joke. Not all humans do, and he has long since searched for a way to convey his appreciation, though repeatedly has not been able to alight on the correct words. Nor has he settled on what he might say to express his gratitude for her assistance this past semester, or how to articulate the idea of the coming term and the anticipation of her absence that has been steadily building, as the day he will come to this room and find her belongings gone draws near.

He is aware of the traditions of how professors extend their thanks to their assistants, a card with platitudes written on it, the offer of future recommendations as needed, even a shared meal for those that have struck up a relationship that borders closer to friendship, and yet each time Spock has given serious thought to any of these, he has not made any decisive plan and now the time to do so has come and, he is certain, has likely passed. It renders the opportunity both squandered and somehow mitigated, as he had never wished to make an offer of time spent away from campus, a lunch or dinner of just the two of them, not if it came by way of a reason tied to their work. And yet the idea of couching it in any other term had never been more than that, a notion that he had whisked away as soon as it formed, impossible to ask that of her while she served as his assistant and now at the end of the semester, Tabitha stands next to his desk, her tea still held in her hands and her eyes fixed on Nyota.

"I have been told that undertaking new experiences is logical," Spock says.

"You know, I've been told that too, though by an Orion, and I'm not sure that's always the case," Nyota says and smiles again, first at him and then at his sister. In truth, it was fortuitous that he made no specific plan to suggest anything to her. With the option rendered moot, he can now easily avoid the surge of emotion that accompanies the idea.

The way in which they work together is well worn, developed quickly in the weeks they spent together before she ever lingered in her chair at the end of the day, before breaks were spent in conversation, not the quiet to which he was once accustomed. Tabitha remains where she is, her tea diminishing by small sips, only once releasing her grip on the cup to take a padd that Spock extends to her with a nod towards Nyota. Carefully, Tabitha holds it out, immediately returning her hand to her cup and Spock cannot help but find her distracting in her stillness, in the prick at the back of his mind like an itch he cannot quite reach.

"Do you not wish to otherwise occupy yourself?" Spock finally asks when she threatens to remain there for the entirety of the morning. When she does not answer, he tips his head towards her drawing materials. The unspoken suggestion only pulls a nearly imperceptible shake of her head from her.

Her Vulcan is quiet, so soft that he has to lean towards her to hear. " _Lu-ar'kadan my'tyez._ When will you be finished?"

Vulcan sounds odd spoken in his office, no matter the number of times that he and Nyota have bandied phrases back and forth between them, discussing a quote of Surak's, the lyrics of a song, a book he had once lent her. "Cadet Uhura is fluent in Vulcan," he says quickly, before Tabitha can presume any further privacy.

"That is not an answer," she says, though she says it in Standard and so softly that if Nyota were anyone else she likely could not hear.

"There is a possibility our work will be complete before lunch." He can feel Nyota watching them and confirms this is the case when he looks beyond Tabitha to find Nyota with her stylus poised above the essay she is grading. The time it takes them will be longer still with Tabitha continuing to hover there, especially to stop for conversation. An imposition on Nyota's day, the short amount of vacation that she has between now and when classes commence for the new semester. "We will be done as quickly as we can."

"What takes so long?"

Spock considers simply motioning to the stack of essays still before him and the corresponding pile on Nyota's desk before anticipating the line of continued questioning that will bring and says simply, "We must read all of these and provide an assessment."

"Why do you not simply ask for an oral examination?"

"Humans have always placed a societal import on literacy. The value placed on oration at home is not one that is fully espoused here."

Tabitha's eyebrows draw together. "Starfleet is an intercultural organization."

Spock begins to answer, only to close his mouth. He dislikes being caught without a response and now especially, Tabitha scrutinizing him and his certainty that Nyota continues to watch. "Pedagogical compromises must be made," he finally offers and then selects a padd that he has finished reading through already and hands it to her. Strictly speaking it is not within regulations to allow this, but Nyota stays silent on the matter and it serves to turn Tabitha's attention from him.

"These are not interesting topics," Tabitha declares after reviewing two papers.

"They capture students' knowledge regarding morphological theory."

"And yet they are hardly engaging."

Spock sets his stylus down. "Would you like to draw?"

"No."

"Did you bring a book with you?"

"I did not."

"Is there not anything that you wish to do?" The eyebrow she raises prompts him to suggestion, one furnished before she can inform him that she would prefer to be in his quarters. "Perhaps explore the building?"

Her eyes narrow. "Alone?"

"Do not go into anyone's office." As she steps out the door he calls after her, "Nor outside."

He knows she can hear him though she does not make any acknowledgement, instead her footsteps steadily drawing further from his office and increasing in speed as she goes, her hesitancy giving way to the rapid tap of them down the hall.

Nyota sets down her padd and again shifts in her seat, her legs crossing and her torso turned towards him. Once more, her hands adjust the hem of her skirt. "You two look exactly alike."

"We do not."

"That-" She points at him, one finger extended. "There." Immediately he smooths his expression, though it does not staunch the curl at the corner of her mouth. "You could be twins."

"She is seventeen years younger than I am."

"Then I feel even worse about the fact that she knows what pedagogy is. I don't think I could have even managed to say it, at that age." Nyota hooks one arm over the back of her chair, her foot swinging back and forth. "Though maybe boredom is a trait we can chalk up to coevolution in a way we can't ascribe to vocabulary. What did she bring to do?"

"She enjoys drawing." That is perhaps an understatement, though Nyota has always been unique in her ability to understand that which he does not say. "Painting as well, though she did not bring her supplies with her."

Logical, at least, to leave them at home. Otherwise he is certain his table would bear the marks his parents' often do, smudges Tabitha is told to wash off before dinner each night, and yet often endure beyond her rather ineffectual scrubbing.

Nyota makes one of the intuitive leaps that she demonstrated a capacity for on the first day of his class and has since always been of particular note to Spock. "She did that?" Nyota asks, her finger indicating the framed picture next to his tea.

He rises and steps around his desk to hand her the small painting that she points to, the one he set on his desk when his mother had sent it, back when his office was new to him, nearly as bare as his quarters had been. Nyota takes it and he watches her eyes trace over the reds and golds of the landscape Tabitha long ago illustrated. Even with her hair tied up as it is, the ends of it slips forward over Nyota's shoulder, exposing the back of her neck above the collar of her sweater and the shape of her shoulders beneath the fabric. Today, as she always does in his office, she has divested herself of her accompanying uniform jacket. Occasionally she will go as far as to pull her sleeves halfway up her forearms, refusing his offer to lower the temperature every time he suggests it.

"That is Mount _Haf-kunel_. It is visible from our home." He hesitates, then places one hand upon the back of her chair, leaning down to point to it in the picture.

"It's beautiful."

More so in person. Nyota has told him that she has never been to Vulcan, and he knows that any description he might attempt would fall short of the pinks and oranges and rust red of the rocks, the hot haze of the air, dust blowing in the wind with the scent of iron.

"What is the room three doors down?" Tabitha asks from the doorway and Spock straightens, tucking his hands behind his back.

"The language lab," he says and shifts his weight slightly further backwards.

Tabitha's head tips to the side. "For experiments?"

"For learning."

"Then it is not a laboratory."

"That is correct."

He takes the opportunity to step even further away when Nyota raises the frame from her lap. "I didn't realize that this was yours."

Tabitha does not respond, so Spock does in the pause of her continued silence. "It is from two years ago."

"I've always loved it."

Tabitha remains silent. Spock offers, "I have a second one in my quarters."

"They are intended to be displayed together," Tabitha says. Her mouth is drawn tight.

"I was unaware," Spock says. Hardly had his mother made note of that, though that she had left anything out of her account of Tabitha completing them seems nearly impossible.

Tabitha looks up at him. "That is obvious. I will be in the-" She pauses and then simply points to the wall in the direction of the lab before disappearing out the door once again.

Spock is suddenly struck by the urge to apologize for her, as illogical as the notion is. Humans would not walk off in the middle of a sentence. Of course, Vulcans do not make a habit of doing so either, and yet Tabitha displayed no such qualms, already the sound of her footsteps disappearing down the hall.

And yet Nyota continues to watch the spot where Tabitha disappeared, and Spock works through what he might say, even as he attempts to dismiss the compulsion to explain Tabitha's behavior, as if he could, as if there is anything to be said beyond the fact that she is eight.

"She is typically quite verbose," he finally settles on. That at least is true.

Nyota shakes her head in what he understands to be a dismissive manner. "It's- what is it? Of no consequence."

She has always excused him, which has never gone unnoticed. Now, her smile is gentle, directed towards the wall where Tabitha pointed.

"And I still maintain," Nyota says as she returns to her work, her mouth lifting in the same way as earlier. "Twins."

It is as they finish their work that Spock is put in mind of the routine he typically keeps during the semester. Habitually, he would have arisen early and made use of the Academy's gymnasium before the students woke, having the weight room and treadmills to himself, apart from a handful of nocturnal individuals, to whom he has grown accustomed sharing campus in the hours before dawn. Doing so would have surely tempered the restlessness that crops up as he grades the third to last paper, and then the penultimate one. As he does so, he finds himself looking up more than once and not for any purpose, each time sure that he is about to speak without any prior thought and each time refocusing on the padd before him in case he actually does so.

"I'll upload the grades," Nyota says when he sets aside the final essay. She nods her chin towards the door, the light falling through the window playing over her face. "You have your hands full."

She is more than capable of doing so, the knowledge of which does little to staunch his urge to offer that they undertake the task together. "Thank you."

"Of course."

He expects her to rise, to perhaps gather the padds in front of her, or take up the strap of her bag and her jacket, still slung over her chair. Instead, she smooths her skirt with her palms, pushing the fabric against the length of her thighs. They should both be on with their days, but here at the end of their time together, he no more stands from her desk than she does.

"Do you have plans for your break?" he asks and finds himself wishing that he had taken the opportunity of still having essays to grade to offer her another cup of tea, this one retrieved from the break room, so that they might currently have half full mugs in front of them.

"Just taking it easy. I have a bit of work to do, but not much else." She shrugs and then smiles. "Maybe I should have gotten my sister to visit as well."

He did not know she had one. Now that seems a gross oversight, though how it might have come up in conversation, he does not know, only that the opportunity for it to do so now exists behind them, the days of those shared discussions in which she might have made mention of it drawn to a close.

"I presume it would occur in a manner quite different than Tabitha's stay." The thought of Nyota's family fills him with too many questions, knowing her only as he does, as a student and as his assistant, her personal history opaque beyond what is detailed on her resume. But she also has a childhood shared with siblings, a family home, a part of her life kept separate from the red of her uniform and the work she turns in to him, precise and thorough. It speaks to a dedication to her work that he always recognized and admired, but now that is colored in with the idea of who might have instilled that in her, how she might have come to be here. The number of inquiries into the subject would spill over the time remaining to them, were he even to begin to pose them, sure as he is that at any moment Tabitha will appear, the minutes ticking past too fast. Were it possible, were it not a fanciful, inane notion, he would stop the clock here, stretch this morning out like an elastic pulled too far, strained at the very capacity to remain right here and now in this place, with her.

"Well, we'd definitely go to that bar." Her nose wrinkles. "Sorry I suggested that. I hope you two have some better plans for the rest of her stay."

"It is no matter." The door to the hallway remains empty. Carefully, so as not to distract her, he probes at the bond between him and Tabitha, finding her both nearby and occupied. With what, he does not investigate, dropping the thin thread of her consciousness before her mind can prick upon the presence of his own. "My parents are coming at the end of the week."

Inexplicably, this causes Nyota to smile. "That'll be nice."

He does not correct her, though in the absence of doing so, silence falls. He finds himself struck with the urge to clear his throat. "My mother grew up in Seattle, and she intends to bring us to visit her own mother."

He has been nearly certain for some time that Nyota has inferred that his mother is human, and her lack of reaction means that she must have done so. Or perhaps she is adept at hiding her surprise in a way others of his acquaintance have not been, as she merely asks, "Do you get up there often?"

"No."

"Is she not a sneak you candy type of Grandmother? Let you stay up late?"

"Vulcans sleep less than humans," he says. He pauses, and then clarifies, "No, she is not."

Nyota's mouth turns downward. It is continually captivating, how many expressions can cross a human's face in such short time, the act of conveying different motions intended as a form of communication that so lacks from his own culture, now written out in the twist of Nyota's lips. "Well, you have a few days until then, right?"

He nods. He does. Empty, except for Tabitha's presence.

"It's nice that she came now, then," Nyota continues. "Convenient, rather than last week."

He cannot help but shake his head. "It is not." For so many reasons. "I have an interview scheduled for before their arrival."

Her question is instant and quickly asked. "You're leaving the department?"

"Not in any immediate sense." Or at least he does not believe so, no indication posted in the job description that he will not be available to teach as construction is finished, which will take some time yet. No, he will have years here, at least two until the _Enterprise_ is ready for launch, should he even be considered for the position. Though there are others. Not as challenging nor likely as fulfilling, but perhaps suitable. Acceptable, in at least some definition of the word. "It is only… I do not wish to spend the entirety of my career as an instructor."

He had not wanted to spend any of it as such, though the allure of the Kobayashi Maru had been sufficient to draw him from active duty. Frequently he has questioned whether that was a wise choice, unable to find a deep-rooted thread of logic with which to settle the matter.

A matter compounded by the fact that it is not entirely lost on him that this semester, at least, was not as tedious as others have been.

"Well, I can't imagine you would." Nyota lays her arm across the back of her chair, turning further towards him with the motion. Odd, how Ops has decided to lay out these offices, with it so difficult to face each other to speak when they are both seated. In so many ways it was easier when she was his student and would sit perched in the chair he reserves for visitors, the one now set before his desk that Tabitha would have made use of, had she wished. He is not certain he finds it fortunate that conversation was not facilitated by the arrangement of his office over the semester, as he is sure the urge would have threatened all the more, or advantageous that Tabitha is not occupying the chair, for Nyota remains where she is, showing no sign of moving. "Is it for something over at HQ?"

A logical deduction, though incorrect, as any other deployment would have him leaving immediately. "No." This, then, is how to tell her, a subject he has not raised with her before. And yet the opportunity to do so now is tinged with a fraughtness he had not anticipated, a perturbation that colors the information through. It occurs to him all at once that he does not wish to inform her at all, though her expectancy, the anticipation with which she is watching him compels him forward. He does not let himself swallow. "For the _Enterprise_."

In one motion, her eyes both widen and her eyebrows rise, and he is sure too that she leans slightly forward. "The _Enterprise_."

Surely, she heard him. And therefore soon, this conversation can draw to a close. It is unsteadying to speak it aloud. "Yes."

"For- What are they even hiring for right now?"

He wonders if her mind is humming as Tabitha's does in the back of his own, straining through options and possibilities. Nyota's must be, for he is certain she has deduced the answer in the narrowing of her eyes. It is only this sureness that prompts him to tell her, a certainty that clamors louder than the suddenness with which he does not wish to share this with her. With anyone, truly, which he immediately qualifies as irrational, illogical, and moreover not actually possible, as Pike already knows, and whatever staffing officers he has conferred with. To say it to Nyota is then nothing at all, just a sharing of information that has already been dispensed elsewhere. His cup of tea has gone cold, the last inch nearly unpleasant as he swallows the liquid and carefully replaces the cup in its same spot on his desk, precise and exact to where it was. "First officer."

"No," she says and lightly hits the back of her chair with the flat of her hand with a smack. "Spock, that's amazing."

The thought he did not wish her to know this is dissolved in the brightness of her smile, though a certain weight of unease remains, knotted there as it has been since he first seriously considered submitting an application. Illogical, he had told himself at the time. Beyond his skill set and entirely too ambitious. It would be best to wait until he has attained the necessary experience to situate him as an ideal candidate, and he is hardly that now. Except, that had not been enough to stop him, and more than once, he has wished that it had been.

Nyota, apparently, shares no such reservations. "You're absolutely going to be great."

He has no response to this. All that he is able to manage is, "I have yet to even interview."

She lifts her hand from the back of her chair in a dismissive wave. "Please. Didn't you just publish that paper? The one on theoretical comparisons of morphological approaches? That won that award?"

He lets his eyebrow rise. "I did not know that you knew of that."

She looks away, then down at her lap, and then quickly says, "I took it upon myself to look at your teaching evals before I took your class last year, and your scores are- they're through the roof, Spock. Incredible, which you know. This is- wow, an entire crew to work with? Oh, this is perfect for you."

"Instruction is not the same as personnel management," he corrects.

"Everyone loves working with you." Inexplicably, she laughs. "Trust me."

A pause follows this declaration. Even turning it over in his mind, it stymies him. Finally, at a loss and with the silence stretching, he simply asks, "Which roof?"

"The-" She stops herself and then smiles. "I don't know. The bell tower? On the Academy Hall? That's a high one."

"Starfleet Medical's is even higher."

"Then there you go." She kicks lightly at the floor, her legs crossed at the ankle and her knees pressed to the side of her chair with how far towards him she has twisted. "So. Big interview coming up- for the _Enterprise_ of all ships, and a family trip," she lists, her head shaking. "What a few days."

He takes a breath. "Indeed."

"Your folks must be excited for you."

When she waits, he realizes she expects a response. "I have not told them," he says, then considers this comment and retroactively clarifies, "I have not yet had an opportunity."

Inaccurate, but he does not have a chance for a second correction as she immediately asks, "Too busy with your sister?"

"It is our father," Spock says before he can reflect on the fact that in this, he might have been excused in avoiding honestly. And yet, now her head is tipped to the side and her eyebrows are once again raised in a manner he understands requests more information, though it occurs to him that of anyone, Nyota might well be versed in the prevarications Vulcans employ in these situations. Which is less than ideal. After a moment, he settles for saying, "He is not well."

Nyota's eyes soften and as she moves to speak he attempts to rectify the situation, to explain, except that too late, he realizes that Tabitha is in the doorway again. Though for how long now he does not know.

Her shoes squeak on the tile with how quickly she steps forward. "Have they responded?"

Of course, to be interrupted by this of all things. "I will inform you when they do."

"When was the last time you checked?"

He shakes his head. "They have not written back."

"How do you know?"

"Please collect your belongings," he instructs and stands. The motion prompts Nyota to do the same, though Tabitha does not similarly move from the door.

Instead, she continues to stand poised there, her eyes flicking towards Nyota and then away again the moment Nyota notices.

"What is the _Enterprise_?" Tabitha asks and that, at least, is better than her silence, how Nyota gives a small, kind smile at Tabitha's repeated stares.

"A star ship," he says. Tabitha remains motionless, so he stacks her pile of paper on top of his own padd and lays his stylus in among her pens, tucking them beneath his thumb and against his padd. All of this, he folds under his arm. The rest of the items on his desk can remain for the handful of liminal days that stretch between the semesters.

The same is not true for Nyota, who takes longer to order her belongings, adding a handful of filmplasts to her bag, her collection of styluses, a padd he knows contains her independent research, which she has now twice shown him, and finally the ceramic mug she has taken to keeping in his office, this last item held carefully in her hand, rather than shuffled in among her other possessions. Her jacket she slings over her arm, and then she is pushing in her chair, and he is attempting to find some other way to occupy himself than continuing to study, with a creeping, spreading discontent, the sight of her empty desk.

"Come," he tells Tabitha for the simple sake of saying anything at all. There was so much more he wished to have told Nyota, a continued length to their conversation that is now cut short, words that might have passed between them, had their morning been allowed to stretch onwards. He is certain that the moments that tick by as they all proceed down the hall should have been reserved for that, not for the tap of footsteps but for whatever Nyota might have said next, and how he might have responded.

He could tell her something of that sort. Should, especially as in the pause before the turbo lift arrives, the moment he takes to look at her, she is in turn watching him. He is hardly certain, but she seems expectant. But he schools himself from allowing an assumption to take form that it is for anything beyond the likelihood that he is supposed to likely thank her for her assistance that morning and over the semester as well. He should have prepared better for this moment. To not do so seems too great an oversight, and yet for the entirety of the turbolift ride he remains at a loss for what precisely to say, or how to begin, leaving them exiting the building and him still searching for words.

"When is lunch?" Tabitha asks from the spot she has taken beside him, her voice low and yet no less demanding for the volume of it.

"Now, if you would like." They are standing where he and Nyota often do at the bottom of the steps to the building, just where the path parts to lead her to her dorm and he to his quarters. They might find themselves here again, perhaps in leaving the building together at some future time, though to do so would be happenstance, not a routine departure from his office at the end of the day.

In this last opportunity, he turns to her, for she too has paused as if this is any other day, as if Tabitha does not stand there with them, as if campus is still full and the semester still at its height and tomorrow might find them back in his office, not left to the emptiness that is the stretch between terms.

"What are you planning for your afternoon?" he finally asks.

"Some data analysis." Nyota brushes her hair back where strands have caught on her shoulder. "And I know, I know, it's vacation, I shouldn't be coding interviews for hours. I hope you two are doing something far more exciting."

He has no objectives. Were Tabitha not here, he would likely continue to tweak the Kobayashi Maru or perhaps prepare his syllabuses for the coming semester, neither of which are time pressing nor likely to be undertaken with any efficiency given Tabitha's presence. He has additional publications to work on, and an ongoing experiment he's conducting with a number of researchers in the botany labs, but he would not presume to bring Tabitha there, not has he had to his office.

He does not sigh, but he does recognize the urge that he wishes to.

"What do you wish to do?" he asks Tabitha.

"Locate snow," Tabitha declares with her usual vehemence, unfettered and forceful. Spock instructs himself to find it fortunate that she did not once again list calling their parents.

"The nearest snow is too far from here to be a reasonable destination for the afternoon." Quickly, he reviews the available activities in the city, many of which he has not partaken in himself. "There is the Fine Arts Museum."

"No."

"Or Muir Woods. There are very large trees there."

Tabitha shakes her head. "I do not like trees."

He nearly frowns before he can catch himself. "How is it possible to dislike trees?"

"They are too tall," Tabitha declares. "I want to see the ocean."

"You have seen the ocean," he states.

Tabitha's eyebrow rises. "Then I wish to see the ocean again."

"You can see the ocean from here," he says and nods across the quad to where the bridge arcs across the bay. Sarek had once taken her on a walk across it, when she was small and consolable only through movement, leading his father to spend a morning pacing back and forth over the span.

"That is the bay."

"It is the same water."

"It does not qualify," Tabitha says. "I want to see the ocean properly, from a closer distance than here. Or snow."

"The ocean," Spock agrees before she can formulate an argument as to why finding snow is the logical choice.

Nyota is watching them both, and when Tabitha finally nods, she smiles. Tabitha's chin tips up as she watches the change in Nyota's expression, her lips parting and then pressing closed once more.

Nyota's hand comes up to twist a handful of her hair and she says, "Gaila and I were actually talking about going to go to the beach."

"Did you not have your work?" Spock asks.

"Oh. Yes." Nyota's tongue darts over her lips. "But I only have a little to do, and then I'm dragging Gaila out into the sun. So."

Silence hangs. Between them, Tabitha looks back and forth from one of them to the other. "That sounds enjoyable," Spock says when Tabitha does not speak.

Nyota rocks backwards on her heels, her toes lifting from the pavement. "You two should join us, if- I don't know when you're going."

Spock blinks. In his side, his heart begins to pick up its pace, a reaction he refuses to allow to persist. "After lunch," he says. Logical, and therefore the correct decision, a coolness to the choice that is steadying when this conversation is not.

Though it does not follow that the discussion is unsatisfactory. Not at all.

"Then maybe we'll see you there." Nyota is still holding her mug and now drops her grip on her hair to take it in both hands. "We always go near the windmills. Gaila likes them."

"Near Golden Gate Park?" He has been there once, while running in the early morning blue of a foggy day. It had been so cold his hands and face had been chapped raw by the time he had retreated to his apartment. His pulse threatens to beat as if he is similarly exerting himself now. "That is a pleasant spot."

"It'd be fun. And anyway." For a moment she squints across the quad, though at what, he cannot tell. "I always like it when we do something outside of work."

Everything now will be outside of their work. And yet even this realization does not subdue the further quickening of his heartbeat at her words. It takes him a moment to say, "I do as well."

"So I'll see you in a bit," she says but does not immediately walk away. Instead, she looks at Tabitha for a moment, and then up at him. "I'm sorry about your father."

"It is not-" He shakes his head. "It is of no matter." It is, of course, and now Tabitha is carefully watching him, her forehead creased. He shakes his head again at her unspoken question. "No, they still did not reply to your message."

"But in the time since you last looked-"

"-The beach," he reminds her. "And lunch. What would you like?"

" _Klitanta s'mun t'forati_."

"I will make you anything except for that."

Nyota is smiling. Incongruous, especially at the hollowness with which he faces the next moments in which he must walk away from their morning, though even at the thought, the idea of the afternoon continues to form, solidifies in his mind until he finds himself prompting Tabitha forward towards his quarters, as if he might hurry time itself along.


	4. Chapter 4

"You are leaving."

"We are leaving," Spock corrects. "Five minutes ago, in fact."

From where undertakes the apparently laborious task of putting on her shoes, Tabitha shakes her head. "On the _Enterprise_."

Spock pauses in the perusal of his jackets. He has already decided on one, a civilian style, one of his few clothing options that is not emblazoned with a Starfleet crest, and yet it is lighter than the others, and he is not entirely certain that he wishes to spend the afternoon chilled. "I did not say that."

"Cadet Uhura said that you would be hired and the logical deduction is that-"

He turns, quicker than he intends to.

"-It is impolite to listen to another's conversation."

"You two would not cease talking," Tabitha says, as she arranges the leg of her pant over her first shoe. "No other option was available."

"Announcing yourself."

Tabitha ignores him, though not in favor of moving any faster. "When will you leave on the _Enterprise_?"

"As I am not yet hired, I have no way of answering that question."

Tabitha pauses with her second shoe in her hands, not even opening the fastening, just holding it. He does not truly think she is capable of purposefully stalling, the motive too illogical, though her pace puts that assumption to question. Even so, there is no solace in her intention or lack thereof, only the fact that the result is the same. He considers whether standing nearer to the door will prompt her onwards, or perhaps a solid push at her mind, though he does neither, instead letting out a slow breath and instructing himself to wait, to abide her pace, to not consider the possibilities that may lie ahead of them, of commitments later in the afternoon Nyota had not mentioned, but that render their meeting moot.

"If you are not hired on the _Enterprise,_ will you seek a position on another ship?"

"I am not certain," he says. Illogical to speak so firmly, as even as he says so, he realizes that he is entirely sure. The idea of remaining at the Academy for too much longer is stifling. It is not the first time he has recognized as much, but perhaps the surge of claustrophobia has not been as strong, nor held such a conviction, that he would prefer to finally be somewhere other than Earth, the number of years spent on this planet too many for his taste, the churning passing of semesters ticked off one after the next, with no end to them in sight.

Though he need not necessarily leave for some time yet. Just soon. Relatively so. "Yes, in all likelihood."

Tabitha slowly pushes her foot into her shoe, only to stop once again. "Then you will not be here at the Academy when we visit Grandmother."

"That is irrelevant, as your visits are uncommon."

"There have been three," Tabitha says. "And I am only eight."

"You have only been here twice."

Her head snaps up. "Three times."

"You did not come to campus on your first trip." Their father had watched her in the hotel room, leaving Spock's mother to spend the visit with him. A relief, that concession was, to not have to walk through the Academy's campus with Sarek at his side, the successes Spock had found here diminished under his father's gaze.

"Yes, I did."

"No, you did not."

"I did, I remember," Tabitha says so resolutely that Spock does not bother to correct her again.

When they finally arrive at the beach, Spock would not quantify the temperature of the air as particularly pleasant, despite the warmth of the sun. This has proven no barrier to the groups of humans who seem determined to splash through the waves, some of them only a head bobbing above the surface of the water and others lying prostrate on towels. Many have brought no form of entertainment, their heads resting on folded arms or their eyes closed as they face the sun, though Spock is certain that despite this, they are hardly engaged in anything as practical as meditation. Napping, more likely, considering their breathing patterns.

He stops walking where loose, dry sand gives way to a harder, firmer pack beneath his feet. Tabitha drags the toe of her shoe across the sand and then examines the sole. At home, sand does not clump and cling like that, no moisture harbored in it, nothing but dry grit that turns to dust. Here, it coats the pad of her index finger when she touches her shoe and then draws a streak on her jacket when she wipes her finger off.

"It is loud," she says.

"Humans are often loud," he says, but she must be speaking of the crash of the waves, for that is where her eyes have travelled, her palm still wiping over the grains of sand stuck to her coat. But the humans are quite noisy, calling to each other in the water and holding conversations that are carried on the wind. He can pick out none of the voices, recognizes no one.

"I did not anticipate that it would be audible." Tabitha does not move towards the edge of the water, instead remaining where she is, her expression stony.

"On a calmer day it is not," Spock says, still searching the nearby clumps of humans.

"We should return then."

"No." He scans the length of the beach. "We are not leaving now."

"But-"

"-We have only just arrived."

"I have now seen the ocean," Tabitha says. Her hands are tucked up into her sleeves. "This is sufficient."

"Making the trip is illogical if we do not spend further time here."

Her head shakes back and forth, and the wind whips strands of loose hair against her face that she pushes back with her hands still hidden in her sleeves. "We have already undertaken the walk, and as such, it cannot be rendered-"

"-You're Tabitha."

The relief he feels is difficult to drive off, as quickly as it comes on, and as strongly.

He has heard various descriptions of Cadet Gaila in the two years since she joined the ranks of students, ranging from the prurient to something that borders on awe, and Spock very much doubts that the latter is related to her aptitude in her engineering courses. Considering the reputation he has gained for himself, he further doubts that anyone would be surprised that clad even as she is, Gaila is hardly of any notice to him, for it is not to her that his attention travels, nor his eyes wander.

No, it is not Gaila who Spock looks to, but the figure a step behind her. He is certain, quite suddenly, that he is staring.

"What do you think?" Gaila asks and Spock jerks his eyes from Nyota to follow the broad sweep of Gaila's hand at the horizon, the waves crashing up onto the shores, bringing with them the smell of salt.

Beside him, Tabitha looks only at Gaila, her lips parted and her face tipped up, unmoving.

"That's your answer?" Gaila asks when Tabitha's eyes do not follow the second gesture that Gaila makes. Spock watches the wideness of Tabitha's eyes narrow with a confusion that beats at him. Steadying, somewhat, to let his mind fill with his sister's wonder, allow it to push back his own thoughts.

Tabitha looks up at Spock and he is careful to only look back at her. "I did not provide an answer."

"Silence is a valid form of communication," he tells her and does not look again at the details of Nyota he has already catalogued, the towel held in front of her, clutched in both hands, the water beading her skin, the way the ocean has washed her eyes free of the cosmetics she typically wears.

Staring is considered rude on Earth, no matter the hypocrisy inherent in that tenet, for Spock has found that principle dismissed with impunity, his back crawling with the sense of being watched, no matter how inane the notion that such attention could possibly instill a perceptible sensation. Still, were Tabitha not concentrating so closely on Gaila that he is sure any prodding at their bond would go unnoticed, he would attempt to impart this fact, tell her to close her mouth, to not scrutinize Gaila with such marvel.

Though when Gaila places her hands upon her hips and peers down at Tabitha in turn, he considers that of anyone, Gaila likely is not only inured to the peculiarities of Terran norms, but in fact dismissive. Nyota would know. Does know, likely, but Spock is too aware of each inch of space between them, too entirely cognizant of every way in which her presence pricks at him to manage anything more than a mere glance towards her.

She smiles at him.

"Good afternoon," he says and looks away.

"The ocean," Gaila prompts. Her head angles towards the water, a sway of darkened, damp curls. "What'd'ya think?"

This time, still watching Gaila too closely, Tabitha speaks. Her voice is so quiet that Spock strains to hear her over the wind, the shouts of the humans around them, the rumble of the waves that threaten to drown her out. "Are you Orion?"

"Sure am," Gaila says. "Are you?"

"What?" Tabitha asks and again turns towards Spock.

"I thought we were taking a survey," Gaila says.

Tabitha's uncertainty threatens towards unease, and Spock gently pushes back at that throb of her agitation against his mind. "What is your opinion on the ocean?"

Tabitha blinks rapidly, first at him, and then at the urge he nudges towards her thoughts, at Gaila.

"It is acceptable," she says. Her forehead creases, her brows drawing together until a tight furrow appears. "I am not Orion."

"You were right," Gaila says to Nyota, though as to what, she does not explain. Instead, she scrutinizes Spock in a way that makes him feel pinned to the stretch of beach, rooted to the sand that shifts under his boots. He is certain that under her study he should not look again at Nyota, everything the towel does not cover, the wet drip of her hair down her arms and shoulders, sure that Gaila will catch him at it.

"Well, c'mon, then," Gaila finally says, and though she speaks to Tabitha, Spock knows that he is somehow the cause of the smile that flits across her face.

"Come where?" Tabitha asks.

"Take off your shoes," Gaila says and points to her own toes, green and half covered in sand.

"Why?"

Gaila sets her hands on her hips again. "So they don't get wet. It's logical."

"What are we doing?" Tabitha asks Spock. Were he human, he would likely shrug. As it is, he has no answer for her, no matter how she stares up at him.

"Making a sand castle. It's what humans do," Gaila says. "So, you know, all roads lead to Rome."

Nyota's lips purse. A strand of wet hair is caught on her cheek. "That's not-"

"-Speaking of," Gaila toes a line in the sand. "We probably need a bridge."

"A bridge?" Tabitha asks. "A bridge across what?"

Gaila points with her sand covered toes, taps the ball of her foot at the line she drew. "The moat. One that-" She raises the flat of her hand. "Lifts. Ny?"

"Drawbridge," Nyota supplies. She is still smiling, the towel held in both hands tucked up near to her chin.

"What mechanism will you use?" Tabitha asks before immediately saying, "That design is not feasible with this building material."

"Never say never."

"But you just said-" Tabitha stares up at Gaila, and then at Spock, her chin tipped upwards towards him. If the confusion writ across her face were not enough, bewilderment continues to wash across the space between them.

Gaila is already halfway to the water. "Are you coming?"

Surely this is too fortunate, too entirely auspicious to be happening, but Spock has long sought to subdue the voice that protests at what seems to not be and instead focus on what is, and Gaila stands there at the water's edge waiting for his sister, and Nyota remains next to him, indisputable and unarguable in her presence.

"Go," Spock prompts when Tabitha lingers with them.

Slowly, so slow that Spock is not entirely sure it will happen at all, Tabitha sets off, first one step and then another and then in a quick patter down the sand. She stops at the water's edge, peering at it, and then out at the horizon, only moving again when Gaila steps in front of her and points to her shoes. Tabitha runs back, a spray of sand behind her. She stands on one foot to strip off a shoe, so precariously that Spock is nearly tempted to hold her upright. With a tug, she pulls it off and balances as she similarly divests herself of her sock.

"Here," she says, holding both out to Spock and then simply pushing them into his hand. Only then does she seem to realize that Nyota remains beside him still, Tabitha's gaze catching on her, and more sedately does Tabitha remove her second shoe and sock before depositing both into Spock's other hand, leaving him there holding them as she trots away again.

"We have-" Nyota turns and points. Sand clings to her bare shoulder, dry now from the sun beating down on them. Surely, in a moment he will blink, and this scene will evaporate. He will never have seen how her hair sticks wet to her back, the detail of her elbow, the fine line of her collarbone, typically hidden behind her clothing and now only interrupted by two thin white straps. "Our things are over there."

Their belongings consist of a second towel, imperfectly laid out, a corner buried and sand sprinkled over the remaining surface, and two piles of clothes, one neatly folded, the other dropped in a line that leads towards the water. He sets Tabitha's shoes next to them, small and impossibly precisely arranged, so that he is half tempted to instead leave them slightly askew, as if they will fit in better that way, inordinately miniature as they are in comparison.

The clothing is not cadet reds, but they are hardly on campus, no matter that if Spock turned to look, he could surely see the tops of the Academy's buildings over the trees.

"How was your work?" he asks, when listening to the sound of the waves, the shouts from the other beach goers, becomes inadequate to fill the silence.

Beside him, Nyota combs her hair from her shoulders, running long fingers through it. It does not hang as straight as he is used to seeing it, worked through by her hands as it is. Nor is it hardly as neat, no matter how she brushes it back. At the water's edge, Gaila has enlisted Tabitha in creating piles of sand, to what end Spock cannot discern, no matter how he continues to study them.

"Fine. Good, actually. I got through those last few transcripts from the other week."

"That is significant progress." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that she nods. "Do you intend to continue over the break?"

"I don't know. Maybe." She brushes sand from the towel she still holds, which is ineffectual at best. Like Gaila, her feet are covered in it. He tries to recall if he has ever seen her without her uniform boots, but surely he would remember making note of the fact that she paints her toenails the same shade as that of her fingernails. Her hair drags across her back as she shakes her head, leaving wet trails where her skin has already dried. "No, I don't think so." She smiles down towards the water. "A few days off seem like a good idea."

A drop of water edges downward from her hair, on a track that takes it just in front of her ear. "Logical."

The wind pushes his clothes against him, the breeze unbroken across miles of ocean. Gusts billow off the plains of Vulcan, similarly free to build up speed in the open expanse of uninterrupted space, but there they carry red dust and the scent of heat, not that of brine and a sweetness to the air that seems particular to Earth. The sand he is used to, but not the bright gold of it, yellowed like a mirror of the sun that hangs above them, the brightness of which creases the corners of Nyota's eyes as she squints towards where Gaila stands ankle deep in the waves. Tabitha hovers at the very edge of the water, twice taking quick steps backwards when the sweep of the tide threatens her toes.

"This is apparently more fun than your office," Nyota says.

"Second only to snow, it would seem."

"I think Gaila could make anything enjoyable," Nyota says, and as if she could have heard her name above the wind whistling past them, Gaila jogs towards them, bearing wet sand held in both hands and garnering the attention of more than a few nearby individuals.

"Are you two going to help?"

Nyota again wipes at her towel. "Do you need us to?"

"Yes," Gaila says and piles one handful of sand on top of the other. It is unproductive, as most falls in wet clumps at her feet. A finger points at Nyota. "My assistant architect informs me that we should recruit you due to relevant experience."

"I'm happy to just watch from here." Nyota turns towards him, and Spock allows himself to meet her gaze, already in agreement even as she asks, "Right?"

Gaila rolls her eyes. "Please."

Please what, she does not specify, returning to the water and the hard pack of sand there that Tabitha has begun to dig in. From there, Gaila calls, "Come on!"

It is mostly self preservation that spurs Spock down the beach, for Nyota lays her towel next to Gaila's, and he will not allow himself to turn to watch how her movements pull the white band of her swimsuit across the middle of her back, that expanse of skin, the wet drip of her hair.

"Rolling up your pants will prevent them from becoming further soaked," he informs Tabitha when a wave catches her unaware. Behind him, Nyota stops near enough that he is overly aware of her, but perhaps he would be anyway even if she were out of sight, far down the beach and around the spit of land that juts out- perhaps even then, his skin would prick and his thoughts would be as diffuse and scattered as the scraps of clouds that litter the sky above them.

The water must be cold, for Tabitha's face wrinkles, and she skips up the beach, the now wet fabric outlining her ankles where it clings damp to them. It might also be refreshing, he imagines, not entirely wishing to find out, but he is warmer than he thought he might be, and he is not certain he can truly blame the sun for that, even hung high in the sky as it is.

"I am fine," Tabitha says.

"Your clothing, however, is not."

"It is immaterial," Tabitha says, and this time allows the water to flood over her feet and rush out again, leaving her sunk into the sand. She leaves behind small footprints when she chases after the wave, ones that are washed away as it sweeps back in. Again she stands, watching the water come and then examining the depressions in the sand around her feet with its egress.

"Stay still," he instructs and reaches for her.

"Do not," Tabitha says but remains where she is as he bends and folds her pant legs halfway up her calves. He does not allow his knee to touch the sand, though when he rises again it is nearly a moot point, as his hands are now coated with fine grains. He brushes his palms together, but the sand sticks to his skin, gritty and too rough.

Behind him, Nyota has crouched over the small mounds of sand Tabitha and Gaila have made. He looks at her face, her expression of concentration like they are in his office, not the length of her bare legs.

"It's supposed to be all one pile," Nyota says.

Gaila towers over her, feet planted and her head shaking in what Spock guesses must be exasperation. "Those are the outer defenses. Obviously."

Nyota picks up a handful of sand and tosses it at Gaila's leg. "Obviously."

"But we need to know how high and-" Gaila turns to Tabitha. Tabitha has her hands in the water now, the cuffs of her sweater creating small eddies where they drag. "What was the other question?"

"Roll up your sleeves," Spock says.

"Total volume." Tabitha stands, examines the wet cuffs plastered to her wrists, and then looks over at Nyota, her hands dropping back to her side.

"It can be whatever size you want," Nyota says.

"Given the size of the base you have chosen and the solidity of the sand, it can only be so tall," Spock says.

Gaila now faces him, sand still stuck to where Nyota's handful hit her knee. "So you have ample experience as well, it would seem."

Spock points to the sand they have collected. "One can infer from the moisture saturation, the particle size, and the-"

"-Really." Gaila says. It is not a question. "You should come give an Engineering lecture."

Spock does not frown, despite his uncertainty as to whether her suggestion is genuine. "The relevance of this skill set is hardly applicable to-"

"-You don't know that," Gaila says. "Unexplored reaches of space and all. Frankly, I'm surprised there's not an Academy course on this."

"Lieutenant Graves is teaching an away mission practicum next semester," Spock says. Tabitha is looking back and forth between them, water swirling around her ankles and a clump of sand in her palm. Nyota is smiling again, her hands cupping her knees, and her eyes bright in a way that has nothing to do with the sun shining over her.

Spock focuses on Gaila, still standing above him.

"I'm going to get in touch with her. This is gold. We'll build this today, work the kinks out- not that kind-" She stops herself, turns to Tabitha. "Sorry. Anyway. Draw up a schematic and send it in."

"I look forward to her response," Spock says.

"I look forward to revamping the Academy's curriculum," Gaila says, and Tabitha continues to watch them in turn, the movement of her eyes and the smaller motion that is carried to her head only stopping when she notices Nyota, still crouched where she is, her palms now holding the front of her shins, and her teeth biting at her bottom lip through her grin.

Spock looks away. "If you move these-" He points to the piles that have already been erected "-You will greatly be able to increase the height."

"No," Tabitha says and steps forward, her feet a wet smack in the water. "We are not going to do it like that."

"They have too many ideas," Gaila says to Tabitha, her curls, even damp as they are, bouncing around her shoulders as she shakes her head.

"Agreed."

"Get out of here," Gaila says and points up the beach, to the sandy towel and the pile of clothes she and Nyota left behind.

Briefly, Nyota rests her chin on her knee, her smile now directed at Spock. Sand is stuck to her cheek. "I spend most of my life being ordered around by Gaila."

"You should consider the command track," Spock tells Gaila, who only rolls her eyes in a circle.

"Too easy."

"Starfleet isn't ready for that," Nyota says and rises in one fluid motion, all long limbs and grace. Spock allows himself to follow after her, attempting to focus only on the task of rubbing his hands free of sand.

"And don't talk about work," Gaila shouts after them.

His boots are wet. Briefly, he hesitates, considering, and then toes them off, sitting on the edge of Gaila's towel to remove his socks as well so that they might dry. Nyota joins him in watching the water when she settles beside him, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. The position stretches her back in a long curved arch. Her hair continues to drip, gathered over her shoulder and streaked with sand from where she has touched it.

It is an odd sort of solitude, far more imperfect than privacy offered by his office, the times when one or the other of them slid the door shut against intruding noise, the nights when the sun slipped below the horizon, and he turned the lamp on his desk on for them to see by. Here, the sun still hangs above them, no discernible eek towards the west, and they are ringed with the throng around them, some so close that the ball they pass between them is not beyond being in danger of overshooting and landing near to where he and Nyota sit. And yet even with Tabitha and Gaila near enough to call to, the other beachgoers hemming them in, encroaching with their conversation and laughter, the quiet feels nearly complete, the towels an island of sequestration upon which only the breeze impinges.

"So," she says finally, when he has not compelled himself to speak. "The _Enterprise_."

"That-" He swallows. Nyota has her cheek on her knees and is smiling at him. "Is against the rules."

Surely he has seen her in the sun before, but not with the corner of her eye tightened against the brightness, not with shadows playing over her face as she lets out a laugh, and certainly not with her shoulders bare, the length of her arm a study in the angle of the light. "Oh, I'll take a chance. Do you get to go up there for your interview?"

She points one finger at the sky above them before once again clasping her arm around her legs, her hand finding her opposite wrist.

He looks away before he can study the way her slim fingers curl over the joint.

"It is scheduled at Headquarters." Pike's office, he assumes from the address provided, not that he has been before. Spock has met him, deployed as they both briefly were on the _Lexington_ , but he has not been in contact since he left the ship. Recently there has been no occasion to, as Spock has been at the Academy and Pike between Iowa and the deep reaches of space. Exactly where, Spock is not certain, though he perhaps should find out. Surely Pike will have reviewed Spock's own resume, the details of his service listed there, and that overlap with Pike's own, no matter how the Captain is known for his poor memory with names and faces. Spock has always been unique enough to stand out, and perhaps this time it might be to his advantage.

"Probably an easier trip then," she says. "And not too much of your day."

He nods in agreement, though silently he acknowledges that it was a poor choice to accept the appointment, what with Tabitha's visit. He cannot dismiss this fact, as he watches her and Gaila continue to add to their piles of sand, but so too can he not completely staunch the gratification at the offer of the interview itself. It is times like these that he is nearly certain he can hear the voice of his father, the instruction to find the thread of logic, to not be swayed by the war that takes place in his stomach, but to push that aside in favor of a cool calculation. Truly, an opportunity to visit the gym today would have been beneficial, and if not that, then silence in the morning hours to meditate, not the sounds of Tabitha rising, blankets kicked off and small feet padding across his floor. He is entirely too agitated, a disquiet that grows the longer he fails to hold it at bay, doubled over again by the impending interview and now the thrill of Nyota sitting next to him.

He works his heel into the sand, creating a small depression. A needless capitulation to the urge to fidget. Still, he does not stop himself. "It is only an hour."

Alternatively, the appointment seems immeasurably long, far too many minutes with which to fill in the details his resume could not hold, and yet also not nearly sufficient for all he imagines he could impart, the fervency he must continually attempt to quell at the thought of the black of space lit with the pinpricks of stars, the white shine of a new ship and a deep space mission ahead of him, the labs equipped with a caliber of equipment that even the Vulcan Science Academy would be hard pressed to boast.

"You'll do great," Nyota says with so much assurance that he cannot help but pull his gaze from the repetitive curl of the waves to her instead. She is so calm, so confident, her eyes on him with a steadiness he wishes he did not envy.

He pushes his feet further into the sand. "I have been told I do not interview well."

Repeatedly. And often without him soliciting such feedback.

"If it makes you feel any better-" She presses her tongue into her cheek and then looks away from him and smiles down the beach. "I was so nervous before this one interview I had, I nearly talked myself out of going." She laughs lightly, and her eyes dart over to his. "It was with this professor. Super smart guy."

She is watching him now, that smile still perched on her lips

"Oh?" he asks, at a loss for anything more, what with her cheek curved like it is, the shine of the sun through her drying hair.

She curls her hands over the outside of her feet, bending even further forward. She is not wearing earrings. A small difference, and yet he is so used to the fall of them at her neck, against her cheek where they might hang now, with her head bent down as she examines her toes.

"But I totally nailed it." She smiles at her feet. Where drops of water must have once clung, salt has dried against her skin, scattered traces of it over her long neck. "Apparently. Or possibly was just hired out of attrition of other applicants."

She is not looking when he shakes his head.

"That was not the case," he says.

"Good." She uncurls, her hands now placed behind her, the sun free to play over her stomach and chest where she no longer bends against her own thighs. He does not watch that shine of sun on her, the shapes shadows take. Instead, they look at the water, the line of the horizon that lifts upon incoming waves and dips back down as they turn to a froth against the sand.

Gaila is laughing, her stomach working and her head tipped back. Below her, Tabitha crouches like Nyota had done, her knees at her shoulders, her head shaking back and forth. Her mind bumps up against his with a hum of focus, the reflexive restraint of one's thoughts against another's eased with the distraction Gaila provides, the objective of their building project, the novelty of the beach.

"Seventeen years, huh?" Nyota asks.

"I presume the spread between you and your sister is substantially less."

"Two years," she says. "Well, twenty one months and what, nineteen months? To be accurate." When she catches him looking at her, she adds, "I have a brother, too."

"I did not realize," Spock says. There is so much to know of her. So much more than has been revealed so recently. He cannot help but ask, "He is nearly three years younger than you, then?"

"No." She catches her teeth over her bottom lip and smiles. "I'm the baby of the family."

"Truly?" Try as he might, he cannot slot this new information into his perception of her, and he realizes that in attempting to do so, he is studying her perhaps too closely, because she raises one hand, leaning more heavily on the other, and briefly covers her smile.

"Ok, ok. It's not- How about this. You-" She points at him. "Have a little sister. When were you going to ever tell me that? And you applied to work on the _Enterprise_." She laughs, her head shaking, as if this is irreconcilable information. "What else should I know?"

"I believe that is all," he says, too caught up in her smile to even consider an answer. Though there is more. But it can be unfurled over time, given the chance. Never has he been predisposed to laying himself bare, stripping away layers of privacy for the sake of idle conversation.

Waves crash with tossed up foam. They curl over each other, one after the other, in a regularity that is soothing. It should not be. He should not be reliant on such patterns for emotional stability.

Beside him, she is watching the waves as well. Her expression is open and soft, none of the focus with which she bent over her work spread out on her desk. A smile still lingers at the corner of her mouth, lays there in the crease of her eye and the looseness with which she holds herself. There is such confidence in her. Such resolute self-assurance. An ease and poise with herself that he has admired for so long now, a calmness with which she goes through her days that speaks to a determination that seems laid down deep within her very character, colored through with a careful decency that she carries in spades, a persistent kindness that strikes him as enduring, steadfast and unwavering.

She, of everyone, has always listened to him.

He takes a breath.

He could stay silent. Instead, he says, "My father has another son as well." Another wave crashes. "He is six years older than I am."

The urge to steel himself against her response is illogical, especially as her reaction is a benign turn towards him. "You're a middle child, then?"

"Of a sort," he says.

"Well, my sister could give you an earful about being a middle sibling."

"We only briefly lived together." Fortunate, perhaps, to avoid the complications that may have plagued other families. And surely she can count the years through to Tabitha's birth, find in that math the shape and manner of their household.

Beside him, she digs her toes into the sand and then stretches her legs out, crossed at the ankle. There is a scar on her knee, and another midway down her right shin. Any questions she harbors do not come, and he pushes away any twinge of relief, unneeded and unnecessary as that response is.

The afternoon shimmers like a soap bubble that might burst at any moment, pricked through with a reality that does not seem to touch the beach, impossible as it is that Nyota sits beside him in aimless conversation as the sun edges downward, as the mounds that Gaila and Tabitha construct grow ever larger. The sun has slipped lower still by the time Gaila presents to them the final product, a tower of drying sand that the tide threatens. Nyota pushes herself up from the towel to join him in inspecting it, her long legs covering the distance with a fluidity that he cannot help but notice, and once he has noticed, watch. Sand dusts her lower back. How it has gotten there he does not know, but it clings everywhere to them. Unbidden and sudden, he imagines brushing it from her skin. His hands at his side, he rolls grains between his fingertips, the grit a rough prick against the thin skin.

Tabitha points to the horizon, and he quickly wipes his palms on his pant legs. "Gaila says there are sea lions."

"That is correct," Spock tells her.

"And that the whales are gone."

"At the aquarium there are holos of them," Nyota says, standing after she has finished scrutinizing the assembled mound of sand, the motion smooth and effortless. "We went once."

"We did," Gaila says. She holds her hands out, her arms spread wide. "Huge. Really, super, big."

Tabitha puts her hands on her waist, her elbows bent outward and her eyes narrowed at Gaila. "How big?"

"The biggest," Gaila says.

"Bigger than _le matayas_ ," Spock clarifies when Tabitha moves closer to inspect the distance between Gaila's hands. With each step she takes, the space between Gaila's hands expands.

"You know what, Ny knows loads about fish. The ocean. You name it," Gaila says, her arms now straight out to the side. Nyota frowns. "She knows everything there is to know. Built in tour guide, you two can't pass this opportunity up."

"Gaila…" Nyota holds both hands up, palms out. "I do not. At all."

"Whales are mammalian," Tabitha says.

"See?" Nyota asks and smiles at Tabitha. Tabitha watches her do it, eyes searching over Nyota's face. "I'm hardly an expert."

"No, really, really, she's just being modest," Gaila says and a green hand grips each of Nyota's shoulders. Nyota receives a gentle shake, and Gaila a glare.

"Both of those statements cannot be true," Tabitha says.

"But," Gaila says, one finger now held up, though she does not release Nyota. "The only way to know is to bring Nyota to the aquarium."

"Are you coming, too?" Tabitha asks.

"I have a thing," Gaila says, shaking her head, which in turn jostles Nyota again. Nyota lifts her eyes towards the sky and lets out an audible sigh.

"What thing?" Tabitha asks.

"A thing that means only Nyota can go. Such a shame. You and Nyota and her Lieutenant Commander."

"Stop," Nyota says, twisting away from Gaila's grip on her.

"What a day," Gaila says and is suddenly halfway up the beach gathering towels, haphazardly tossing Nyota's relatively sand-free one on top of her own. "What a day tomorrow will be."

"Are we truly going?" Tabitha asks.

"If you would like to," Spock says. He turns to Nyota and for a moment watches her watch Gaila. Nervousness threatens, accompanied by a swell of disquiet as the shape of the coming days springs to mind, the emptiness of them, the time until the semester recommences and the vague, indistinct possibility of how hollow the term might be. All of this, he pushes away as best he can, the effort imperfect, incomplete with how his hands threaten to shift at his sides. It is just an offer, one that she can decline. It bears no more significance than that of the suggestion of lunch in his office, of tea, of conversation. It is trivial, truly. Inconsequential. He takes a breath and presses onward before he can find a reason not to. "If you would like to as well, you should join us."

Surely she does not. She has plans. She has her work. She has an active and fulfilling social life. She has interests of her own, and she has a wealth of ways in which to spend her time that do not include another day with him and his sister.

And yet Nyota's mouth untwists from the frown Gaila left it in. Her smile is slow to come, aimed at the sand as it is, but brilliant all the same.

"Yes," she says. So simple, really, her answer so easily given. He exhales. Unbidden, that response. Unacceptable in the ferocity in which it comes. "I'd love that."

Even when they reach his apartment, Tabitha is still covered in sand, and drying water leaves rings of salt on her clothing.

"Was that a close enough inspection of the ocean?" he asks as he unfastens his jacket.

"Satisfactory," Tabitha declares, a line of sand following her where she walks. Despite any efforts he makes towards immediately cleaning it, the sand will likely be ground into his carpet now, her small feet tracking back and forth over the mess as she removes her own jacket and sits on the floor to take off her shoes once again. "Spock?"

"Yes?"

"Gaila is not very logical."

"No, I suppose she is not."

Not much of the day was. Here, in the quiet of his rooms, he can only catch sight of the preceding hours in snatched images of sun soaked skin, scraps of conversation, as he and Nyota idled the afternoon away, the remembered fragment of her laugh. And here, where he has stood so many times, removing his jacket and bag and shoes, he lets out a breath of everything that was caught and held inside of him, latched onto, as if any ease of that grip would begin a tumult he could not hope to stop. The ground beneath him is hardly shifting sand, but it might be for all the steadiness it provides him as he tries to wrench his thoughts from the slope of Nyota's shoulder, the flash of her teeth in her grin. It is not the leftover wash of the sun that burns bright in him, but a fire kindled on the strength of her smile, aimed as it was at him.

The promise of tomorrow is etched through with a hope he can barely admit to. Better not to, in all likelihood. Safer, as something half imagined.

Far more acceptable too, what with how an unasked for, unsought, optimism now pounds in him. No, much better to not lay stock in expectations. Surely he is capable of controlling himself more ably than that. And it is simply one more day. Today was a windfall. Unprecedented, unexpected, and that much more exceptional for the fact of it. Tomorrow is nothing more than the same, and there is no promise of the creation of an enduring habit, no matter the directions his mind wishes to wander.

Slowly, Tabitha removes one shoe, a hand braced beneath the heel of it, and the other cupping the toe. "It was enjoyable regardless."

"I am glad," he says. He wants to shake himself into movement, into a purposeful task beyond staring into his apartment.

She pauses with her thumb hooked into the top of her sock. "Do you think that Nyota has truly built sand castles before?"

He should have asked. He can, tomorrow. The leap in his stomach at that thought is entirely unacceptable, but he is powerless to push it away. "In all likelihood, yes."

"Do you think she knows about Terran fish?"

"At least a cursory amount." He carefully hangs his jacket on its hook. He leaves it straight and neat, as if it were any other day, as if he were returning from his office, a meeting, a lecture hall, not a sun drenched afternoon. The fabric is still warm. "She is quite intelligent."

"Is she truly going to come to the aquarium?"

He adjusts his coat once more, and Tabitha's beside his. Impossible, nearly, that Nyota is, and yet the fact of it burns bright. "Is that acceptable to you?"

"Will Gaila come?"

"Apparently not." For better or for worse. Their mother says that often, though generally in respect to some aspect of Vulcan culture she finds expendable, and more specifically to the fact she must endure it regardless of her opinion. He supposes the phrase can also be applied to the calculation of whether tomorrow would benefit from Gaila's absence, or if it would not be advantageous to have her included. Would that she would come in order to leave him alone with Nyota again.

But to want as fervently as he does is not acceptable, to have had the hours together they did and still hunger for more is unreasonable, intolerable. And yet, he is at a loss to do otherwise, an eagerness building in him, even as he stands before his coatrack, and swells as if insurmountable.

"Very well," Tabitha says, her sock a wet plop on the floor when she drops it. "Nyota alone is adequate."

Her head is bent forward over her other shoe. She is so small, seated there, no matter how she has grown.

"The Terran sun has properties not shared by ours," he says when she finally stands, and he is still rooted to the same spot. Tabitha's forehead creases, and he clarifies, "You now have freckles."

"I do not."

Gently and carefully, so as not to intrude upon her mind, he touches the bridge of her nose. "Incorrect."

Both of her hands cover her nose, and he barely moves his finger in time to not have it trapped there beneath her own. He is not particularly inclined to share his thoughts. He never is and never has been, and he sends her towards the shower with the resolve to gain a much needed grip on himself, lest his control slip further, a determination that is tempered by the knowledge that such a pursuit is likely impossible, what with the idea of tomorrow waiting for him.


	5. Chapter 5

"What are fraternization regulations?"

"Do not," he says, but the stretch into the backseat is too far to seize the padd she holds.

"You would be better able to reach me, if you allowed me to sit in the front."

"The length of your legs dictate-" The seatbelt cuts into his side as he attempts to twist further. "Tabitha, please do not read that."

"I am simply curious."

"Tabitha."

"'The consideration of perceived or actual partiality must be- what is perceived partiality?"

The doors to Nyota's dorm are opening, whisked apart with what must be her presence. " _Tabitha_."

His hands curl too tight over the controls as Nyota opens the passenger door, folding herself into the seat with a smile and a rush of the wet that has settled over the city in an impenetrable bank of fog. Tabitha had studied it from the windows of his apartment as he had prompted her to actually consume her breakfast, and then again in the car, her palm pressed to the window. There is still a mark there, a streak of five fingers near to where Nyota's shoulder now is, though Tabitha's hand is currently wrapped around his padd, and her eyes, once turned to the shifting mist, are instead scanning the document she has found.

"Hi." Nyota is all long legs and long hair, her knees bent and bare where her skirt falls to mid thigh, her hair a loose tumble over her shoulders. The casualness of the style, so different from how she appears when in uniform, should not be novel after yesterday.

Tabitha's head comes up from the padd, her eyes on Nyota, and Spock watches her watch Nyota seat herself.

A respite, perhaps, brought about by Tabitha's interest in Nyota, what was silence now intent, pointed attention.

But it is an idle wish, Tabitha's curiosity not sufficient to fully suspend her interrogation, as she blinks, bends over the padd once more, and asks, "What does integrity of supervisory authority mean?"

"Hello," Spock says. His hands shift on the controls and he has to focus on easing the car into reverse. He takes the opportunity the care necessary for backing out provides to turn and pin Tabitha with a look.

Apparently, it lacks the austerity of their father's. Or perhaps, and more likely, Tabitha has never seen that expression cross Sarek's face, for she asks, "Is it different than normal authority?"

"Is that for your interview?" Nyota asks. She is smiling. There is no sand clinging to her, no wrap of her red uniform. Today is new once again, a necklace at her throat, a shirt that lays bare the skin beneath, a touch of color on her eyelids. When she blinks, he stares.

Then, he turns the car onto the street, grasping for some amount of focus.

The road is crowded with other cars, though Spock does not know whether it is the thick fog or simply the time of day that has intersections so congested, commuters returning from lunch, struggling through the city to their offices. Typically he would be among them, though on foot, turning just there to cut through campus to reach the Xenolinguistics Building. Today he passes that spot, leaves it behind and guides the car up one of San Francisco's hills.

"Supervisory authority is when officers are in charge of personnel who report directly to them." At the top of the hill, he checks the street to his left, though no cars are coming from that direction. He does not allow himself to turn towards Nyota to say, "And no, that is not related to tomorrow."

It is. Tangentially though, and as she did not ask for specifics, he does not offer them, does not speak of the time he spent that morning reviewing regulations pertaining to ranks and the various statutes that involve active duty personnel versus those in other positions in Starfleet. He had done so in the hour before Tabitha had woken, weak light permeating his bedroom where he had sat on the foot of his bed, so as not to disturb her. At the time, he had felt that he dallied with the possibility of a jinx, an inane and fanciful notion. It was as if he were ushering forth some portent of a future that could not possibly exist, and yet he did so willingly and despite himself, searching through sets of policies he had never had reason to peruse. Unbearable to not look, and unbearable to do so. And yet the fact of the day stretches out before him, an hour with Pike coming on its heels a morning later, both seemingly promissory in a way he still cannot fully grasp.

Illogical to indulge himself. Inexcusable, truly.

Were he able to, he would reach behind himself and take his padd from Tabitha, reverse the offer to let her write another message to their parents as they waited for Nyota, seize the intervening hours since he perched cross-legged on his bed and ensure that he removed that document from his padd, from the data chip history, from Starfleet's database if need be, from his own past, were he able.

"Tabitha," he says instead. He is certain sternness does not weigh his tone as much as he would wish it to.

"How can perception be partial?" she asks.

"Is there any specific exhibit beyond the holos of the whales that you wish to see?" he asks. In the rearview mirror, she is still bent over his padd.

"No," she says, her head shaking down at the document. His fingers tighten on the car's controls.

"Nothing at all?" he asks.

"I already answered you," Tabitha says, and she draws her knees up, sets his padd on them, and scrolls further down the document.

He merges onto the highway, again checking out his own window, increasing his speed until the cars rushing past them seem instead to slow to a relatively sedate pace. Only then does he turn back to Nyota, her eyes rimmed with black as they typically are, and the shirt that lays just so against the length of her neck. After yesterday, her appearance should be grounded in some amount of normalcy, but he cannot see anything other than how unlike her uniform her chosen outfit is, how unusual she seems next to him in his car than any time that they were in his office, his classroom, the halls of the Academy's buildings where they so often happened upon each other. Impossible, really, that she is here.

"Are there aspects of the aquarium you particularly enjoyed?" he asks her, pushing away thoughts that question the tenability of this reality. The very fact of her sits so close to him, near enough that it would be conceivable that their elbows might brush, given the chance.

"Gaila liked the turtles." Nyota smooths her skirt down her thighs, long fingers working over the fabric. He forces his attention back to the road. "And they have penguins."

"Penguins cannot fly," Tabitha says.

"They're really good at swimming, though," Nyota says, turning around to face Tabitha as she speaks. But Tabitha remains bent over the padd, one finger scrolling to another section of the document, otherwise still and completely silent.

"Did Gaila enjoy them as well?" Spock finally asks.

"She did," Nyota says, facing forward again. "Despite their aerial deficiencies."

"Which are considerable."

She smiles. With one finger, she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "Definitely."

The road rushing by them is a blur he must pay attention to, the cars around them, the signs they hurtle past for San Mateo and San Jose as they approach Monterey. And yet the conversations he has wished to have with Nyota, the ones stifled by the confines placed on their time by their schedules, their uniforms and work and the decorum required by campus, crowd into his mind to be picked through, sorted and decided upon, as if all could fit into today given proper planning. Absurd, though, nearly as impossible as how near to him she is, to fill these hours they have together with all that he wishes to.

Penguins, he cannot help but think, hardly make that list.

"Earth has sixty species of flightless birds," Tabitha says from the backseat.

"Ostriches," Nyota says, as comfortable with this subject as she is in so many others. Astounding, truly, how much she knows, how she is able to hold so many different conversations, and with such ease. "And kiwis."

"And rhea, cassowaries, and emus," Tabitha adds, and Spock cannot decide whether he would wish for her to list the remaining fifty four or keep her attention on the padd she continues to read and offer him the opportunity to talk to Nyota himself.

Again Nyota turns towards Tabitha, her safety belt pulling tight across her chest and her hair slipping from behind her ear. "You know a lot about them."

"I had to compile a report for school."

"On flightless birds?" Nyota asks.

"On Terran birds." Tabitha still does not raise her head.

"That's an interesting topic."

"It was not my choice."

As Nyota turns back, her eyes catch his own. For a moment she is silent, the hum of the road rushing past them, and Spock is certain that he can feel her eyes boring into his cheek as he watches the other cars. Which is a foolish notion, at best.

"Well school would have been much better when I was your age if I'd gotten to do something like that," Nyota says, facing forward once more. "We certainly didn't get to do any projects on birds, flightless or otherwise, let alone birds from any other planet."

He allows himself to turn briefly from the road. "You did not enjoy your schooling?"

"Now I do." She grins at him. "But back then, I hated it."

Impossible. "Truly?" he asks.

"I know, I know." She laughs, her hand coming up to grip at her seatbelt where it crosses her sternum. "Gaila knows too, which is worse."

"I would not have predicted that," he says. Accurate, at least, and the conversation gives reason to not study how her hand looks there, pressed so close to her chest.

"That Gaila can wring any sort of information out of me that she wishes?" Nyota asks. Her smile pushes her cheek into a curve, crinkles the corner of her eye. "Did you get to do a similar project? On birds?"

"No."

He should turn on the radio. Humans often listen to music while driving, though whether it is for the sake of ambience or just to fill silence, he does not know.

"Spock did not attend my school." This, from the backseat, spoken as Tabitha remains curled over his padd, her small finger continuing to drag the regulations document across the screen. It is hardly interesting, in no way deserving of her scrutiny, and yet there she remains, the padd on her knees and only the top of her head visible in the mirror. "Is Gaila telepathic too?"

Once more, Nyota turns. "She's persuasive." When Tabitha does not respond, Nyota asks, "What school do you go to?"

Spock is nearly certainly able to predict Tabitha's failure to answer and is on the verge of offering his own when she finally says, "The _Shi'oren_ Interspecies School." Similarly unexpected, if not unprecedented, she adds, "Father works there."

"At the school?"

"At the Embassy," Tabitha says, as if Nyota knows that the school is located adjacent. Illogical to presume such familiarity with their home city, but when he begins to explain such details, Tabitha asks, "What is the difference between a commissioned and warrant officer?"

"Warrant officers are noncommissioned." Spock changes lanes, in order to pass a slow moving hover truck, the back weighted down with freight. Surely shipping via a transporter would be more efficient, would free the highway from slow moving cargo.

"Do you like your new school better than your old one?" Nyota asks, only to have Tabitha lapse back into silence.

Spock could detail that school for her, but he refrains, letting quiet settle again, the hum of the road beneath them, and the rush of air filling in for all that he could say. For so long now, he has set aside the memories of those days, the solitude of his studies, the endless repetition of facts and figures. When those drills finally ceased, they were replaced by lessons in debate, his classmates squared against him, as if the deciding factor in the room was were merit in logic, as if social status hinged on anything so simple as that. No, he has done well to replace those days with the seminar rooms of Starfleet, the long lines of seats in lecture halls, and office doors opening onto a corridor that cadets track down at their leisure, once a tableau so foreign to him as to render him silent in those halls, simply attempting to successfully seek out his next class, a routine that is now a backdrop to the passing of his days.

Once he would have never presumed that Earth might be as familiar as it is, but the yellow sun that greets him when he steps out of the car, the puffy clouds and breeze that blows gentle, shifting through the leaves on trees, are well worn, as commonplace and routine as his work here and the years he has spent on this planet. Unexceptional, all of it, the crowds of humans in the parking lot, the calls of birds that do not screech and scream like those on Vulcan do, the cracks in the pavement that at home would never be allowed to remain, but would be patched up for the sake of efficiency and aesthetics, filled in and covered, as if they had never been there at all.

Tabitha still stares around herself, at the other cars, at Nyota's sandals, at the groups of human children who are likely her own age, though Spock has never been particularly skilled at correctly estimating. Too few children on the Academy's campus, and no reason to interact with the ones that ever do come, accompanying their parents on occasions so rare he cannot bring to mind more than a handful of them. Here, what must be a pair of siblings race towards the aquarium's entrance, footfalls on pavements and a shout that is carried on the wind. Tabitha watches them, stock-still, not electing to copy their example of hanging over the rail that borders the aquariums' grounds, below which ocean waves crash on what must be rocks.

"It is loud," Tabitha says, her hand still on the car door.

Spock reaches over her head and presses the door close. There, on the seat, is his padd, her hands now gratifyingly empty of it. "I am aware."

He could ask if Nyota is cold with the press of the wind on them, but she is carding her hair from her face, turned towards the water, and the words catch, inane and unneeded, not when he could instead study her profile, free now of the distraction of the road. She clearly is sufficiently comfortable with her bare arms, the skirt that only falls to her knees. The fabric is loose, none of the rigidity of stiff cadet reds, just swirl of light cloth that catches in the wind and presses to the outline of her thigh.

"Come," he says to Tabitha, his eyes on the aquarium entrance and the throngs that gather there.

The map in the lobby shines with color coded exhibits wrought in miniature. Tabitha pushes to the front of the crowd in order to examine it, her hands clasped before her and her body a break in the shifting movement around her, standing motionless as she reads. Then, with no more warning than the feel of her thoughts narrowing as her attention hones in, she sets off for a long hallway that stretches to the right, lined with exhibits that light the corridor. Spock follows her past a tank that spans the length of the wall that Tabitha does not spare a glance at. Nyota does, turning as she walks to watch kelp wave back and forth and fish drift on manufactured currents.

In front of the holograms of whales, Tabitha is a silent and still shape, silhouetted against the blues and grays. Clearly, the exhibit is intended to impart a vision of what their habitat might have been, the simulated water around them streaked through with rays of fake sunlight, and the display set at an angle that recreates a seeming depth, rendering the whales' bodies in proportion to their surroundings in a way that suggests at their size.

Tabitha watches a depiction of a whale breach the waves, water and air exploding upwards. How peculiar all of this life in the sea is, entire ecosystems of this planet harbored in the ocean, nearly another world entirely for how separate it is from humans' mark upon the land.

"Acceptable," Tabitha says, when the whale has fallen back into the water with a splash, pixels representing drops of water slung high into the fake sky.

"There is further information." Spock does not need to gesture, but he does all the same, towards where Nyota is studying a placard, reading it as quickly and attentively as she did during his classes, her eyes fixed on his slides and her stylus poised above her notes. Now, her finger idly twists a lock of hair, which she drops when she notices both he and Tabitha looking at her.

"I am satisfied," Tabitha says and sets off back down the hallway.

"There is another exhibit on dolphins," Spock says. He matches her pace easily and, stepping in front of her, halts her forward motion.

"Which are not whales," Tabitha says. He can feel her intention to simply walk around him, one that is thankfully stymied by an encroaching group of humans, boisterous in their conversation, and unthinking in the needless amounts of space they take up as they walk.

"Would you like to learn more about sea lions?" he asks.

"No."

"You were interested yesterday," he says, and though he waits, Tabitha does not respond. Again he looks at Nyota, standing where she is near the placard, though her attention has not returned to it. "It is illogical to leave now."

"It is illogical to prevaricate if our objective is complete."

"There is no other pursuit to occupy you with today other than remaining here."

"Snow." Tabitha's arms cross. "As I have informed you. Therefore it is more logical to-"

"-Decisions cannot have varying degrees of logic."

"And yet your choice to stay-"

"-We are already here," he says. As she moves towards him, Nyota's presence is a magnet that draws his attention, floods his mind and sits in him, how the lights of the holo play over her face, her quiet among the bustle of others in the exhibit. "Therefore it would follow that instead of-"

"-Would follow, but does not."

Spock resists the sigh that threatens at the top of his throat. "You do not know what I was going to say."

"I do," Tabitha says, and this time when he turns to Nyota, Tabitha's attention matches his own. Nyota is smiling, quite widely, and though it is aimed at them, he cannot discern the impetus.

"I'm just-" Nyota points to an exhibit set into the wall as if the motion serves to hide her smile. Hardly, with how the light shines through the glass and the water behind it, catching on her eyes and the white of her teeth. "Looking at the jellyfish."

Her knuckle raps on the glass, though the creatures within do not notice, if they are even able to. Though surely they must be, floating nervous systems that they are, wired to respond to any touch, their soothing, graceful dance through the tank a mirage for all they are capable of.

Nyota watches Tabitha search the tank and Spock watches Nyota, the smile still spread across her mouth, the way her hand rises to brush her hair behind her shoulder.

When she quite suddenly turns to him, he looks away. Out of the corner of his eye as he studies the tank, he can see her hand fall from her hair to smooth down the front of her shirt.

"Where?" Tabitha asks.

"In front of you," Spock says.

"There," Nyota says and again taps her finger on the glass.

"There are not fish in that exhibit." Tabitha shakes her head.

"Those are jellyfish," Spock says, a long tentacle drifting past him at eye level, followed by the billowing, undulating shape of another.

Tabitha's mouth is a hard line, though Spock can feel her interest resting at odds with her expression, piqued quite despite herself. "Fish are vertebrates," she says.

"They're-" Nyota squints at another placard, this one hung just above Tabitha's head. The corners of her eyes crease as she reads. So similar to her expression in his office when she would focus on a padd, her eyes flicking back and forth over the text. "Cnidaria. Jellyfish." She tucks her hair back, her fingers a long comb through it as she pushes it behind her ears. "Gaila said the same thing when we were here. Jellyfish aren't fish."

"A logical reaction," Tabitha says.

Nyota smiles, and her eyes crease again, though differently, subtly and yet markedly unlike her expression of focus. How captivating, the variation in those expressions that cross her face, how utterly and completely engrossing to watch.

"She was incensed," Nyota says.

On this, Tabitha does not comment, but the flare of her mind in the back of Spock's own tells him that such a reaction might well cross cultural and biological boundaries.

Another group of humans approach, three children pulling at parents' hands and filling the room with their noise and bodies, so spread out that Tabitha moves sideways to avoid them. He recognizes the stiff withdrawal, the drawing up of shoulders and tucking back of hands, as if fingers might stray too close. Inconceivable at home, unthinkable to drift so near to another.

In their wake, Tabitha stays where she is, her eyes following the family as they take the place that the three of them had stood only moments ago before the whales.

"Are there non-Terran animals here?" Tabitha asks.

"No," Spock says.

"Why?"

"It is a Terran aquarium."

"But comparison with life from other planets would provide a more enriching learning experience," Tabitha says.

"In all likelihood," Spock says.

"These exhibits are not complementary," she says, turning from the jellyfish to the next set of glass displays, one of a seahorse, and beyond silver fish that swim in formation, creating endless patterns with their movements, and next a scene of a beach with a miniature tide pool within. How different this is than how displays on Vulcan would be arranged, and in this she is entirely correct, whatever reason behind the design here lacking the logical order, that eye to aesthetics that is so indicative of home. Of course so too is she correct that the volume here, the voices raised to a decibel not found in indoor spaces on Vulcan, is not reasonable and therefore not acceptable.

He waits for a further comment on this matter, and if not that, then for Tabitha's interest to slide away, but she leans forward towards the scene, her eyes tracking a snail's slow pace along the rock.

"We have those," Tabitha says, her finger pressed to another spot on the tank. She follows the crab she is studying as it skitters sideways on the recreated ocean floor, her hands grabbing and pulling her along the rail, the crab's feet sending up plumes of sand while Tabitha's only pad on the carpet. "At home."

"In the canyon?" The one behind their house where Spock was not allowed to go on his own, no matter how he longed to slide down the rocks that led in a steep cliff from the porch of their house, to the valley spread out for his taking. There were crab-like creatures and more that hid in the shadows of the rocks, tucking themselves into the dark when the _la matayas_ shrieked. Spock had spent hours hanging over the railing, the push of it too hard into his stomach and his toes barely brushing the stones of the veranda. His parents took to the habit of calling him back even though he never moved from there in the first place, as if looking was in itself a danger, his eyes trained on the horizon, the crags of the rocks, and what he might find there.

"The park," Tabitha says.

"Which park?"

"The one by the market."

"There is no park near the market."

"There is. Father takes me after school."

"Father brings you?" Spock asks. It is needless, to repeat her.

"Are there sharks here?" Tabitha asks.

"You said you were uninterested in further exhibits," he says, but Tabitha is already an arm span away and then a second one, her mouth slightly parted as she stares into the tank. She edges further away still and Spock neither calls her back nor nudges at her mind. With her so focused on the crab, her thoughts are a low thrum that bump against his own, the possibility of plucking at them for her attention there, but not necessary, even when she disappears from sight on the other side of a clump of adolescents.

"I'm glad to know what capriciousness isn't human specific," Nyota says from beside him.

As a child, Spock was not like that. But to say so would be a capitulation to the exasperation that rises in him, so he offers, "I believe you mean fickle."

"Labile," Nyota says. "But a little unpredictability is good, right? Keeps you on your toes?"

He has no suitable answer and so does not offer one. Though his is apparently not the correct choice, and he is silent for what is evidently too long, for Nyota grimaces, her nose scrunching and her mouth tightening. "I just mean that it's nice to be off campus, right? Away from the office?"

He would most certainly be at work, given another course of events this week. Alone in his office, his padds before him, his desk undisturbed by small hands sifting through his possessions, and his apartment similarly untouched, waiting for him in the evening silent and solitary. She would be with her friends.

"You have, as you would say, a point," he says. Before him, the snail has reached the edge of the rock, and Spock can only predict the laborious task ahead of it as it continues to where it is going. The water's edge, perhaps, or a bit of kelp placed on the sand, likely by the hand of the exhibit's curator.

Too strongly rises urge to consider another turn of events entirely. A different day, somehow still spent in her company, and similarly away from the Academy and the trappings of their work, but the hours not beset by the whims of Tabitha's fancy, the schedule their own, derived through their wishes, their own choice as to how to spend their time.

He blinks. Ushers the thought from his mind before it can form further. Around him, humans press close. Earth is always claustrophobic, but this is even more so, these closed hallways, the odd light that shines through the water.

"What's your brother like?" she asks, and he knows he turns too quickly towards her for she says, "Sorry, I-"

"-It is no matter." Surely the others around them can hear their conversation, though when Spock looks, they are engrossed in the fish, the crabs, the minutiae of the aquarium.

An easy description of Sybok hardly springs readily to mind. And again, his silence stretches onwards too long, Nyota looking up at him, expectant.

"You said he was older," Nyota says when he does not speak. Before he can confirm this, she pushes her hair back, her head shaking. "I shouldn't pry."

"You are not." Still, Spock flounders. He is not accustomed to such incoherency, such inability to express himself. What is possibly accurate, what can he manage to actually put into words. "He was quite adept at chess."

"Was?" Nyota asks. Given over as he is to the blankness her questions have instilled, Spock nearly misses the tone of her voice, the way her lips part and her eyebrows gently rise, and even then it takes him a moment to understand that it is concern tinging her reaction.

"He left." The snail is still on its rock, tentacles searching the air. Perhaps it will simply remain there, its home perched upon its back, the rock its final destination after all. "At our father's insistence."

What a banal sentence. How frail it is, to carry all of the weight of those days. Nyota's precision for language would never allow its use, not if she had heard how Sarek's words had hung heavy in the air, thick and clear with an unyielding solidity to them.

"Ok," Nyota says, and if the gentleness of her nod is not enough, the softness of the word sufficiently conveys her satisfaction with his answer. No more is needed, and she will not ask. So different from the questions that plagued him in the weeks following Sybok's departure, her silence so dissimilar from the hush he was met with at home, the blanketed stillness of those halls and rooms that echoed with the emptiness of voices that were once raised, footsteps that stepped with an anger not tolerated.

"He was not overly inclined towards Surak's teachings," Spock says, though it is entirely unnecessary. But she is still watching him, still listening, and despite himself, he continues to speak. "Vulcan was therefore… untenable."

Sybok's word, spoken as he thrust shirts and pants into a bag. Untenable. Unbearable. Unendurable and unaccepting of the purported differences that were so celebrated by its people.

Are celebrated. Ostensibly.

Perhaps Nyota even knows the phrase _V'tosh ka'tur_. Vulcans without logic. If she does, she does not speak the words, and he does not offer them.

"That must have been difficult," Nyota says.

"I believe he was quite relieved to finally leave." And furthermore glad for the ability to fully feel that relief, at long last freeing himself of the attempt to win their father's approval through such repression, the bounds of which Sybok had thrown off in those final days.

"I meant for you."

"Ah." Spock blinks. The snail still has not moved. "I see."

He is still aware that she is watching him. Again, the compulsion to look around himself to ascertain if others are listening swells in him and again he shutters the urge. No, Nyota is the only one with such interest, a curiosity tempered with her customary kindness.

"Did he ever meet Tabitha?" she asks.

He could tell her that he does not wish to speak of this. She would nod and apologize and allow him his privacy, likely providing a change of subject that would ease into another conversation entirely, the subject dropped and not raised again, certainly not by her and in all likelihood not by him. Not after all these years, so very, very long of not speaking of it.

"No," he says. Spock can still hear the crash of the door as Sybok had thrown it shut. The house did not shake, built into rock as it was, but it might have, for the force of it. "Our father would not have allowed it, even were it possible."

 _Unacceptable_ , Sarek had said in the stillness that had settled, the door closed. No more had been needed, for if the word was not enough, the hard, silent shuttering of Sarek's thoughts was.

"Is your father really ok?" Nyota asks. Prescient, she is. Insightful to a degree he constantly underestimates.

"Yes." He studies the tide pool. He cannot help but wonder if it artificially fills and then evaporates, if the timing is tied to that of Earth's moon or the museum's schedule. "It is a passing matter."

"He's better now?"

In all likelihood. Spock watches the ripples cross the surface, sent across by an invisible, artificial wind, and resolutely does not consider any further details as to what is transpiring on Vulcan. Only belatedly does he realize the way in which Nyota continues to study him. He still cannot understand how any human does that, and Nyota in particular, the gentleness that she can hold in her expression without any discernible change that he can see, no matter how he looks for it.

He searches for a way to answer but deception is hardly effortless, and entirely less so with her.

"I believe so," he says carefully, trying for a truth that can be comfortable without edging into all that he does not want to contemplate. His father certainly was ill, a fire that burns too hot in all Vulcans, a bubbling boil that swells until it ruptures. As a child Spock had not understood, though admittedly now he still wishes he did not, despite the curiosity that plagued him as it did all Vulcan children, when they are first able to stitch together the pieces of facts that adults could not entirely hide, the missed days of work, the locked doors, children sent to relative's houses for days at a time with no explanation needed.

Earth had been too large when he arrived to it, wide and wet, and his Grandmother had greeted him with all of the reserve he associated with his own people, but none of the familiarity of home.

"Have you heard from him?" Nyota asks.

"No."

"Is this Tabitha's first time away from them?"

"I believe so."

"That's hard."

Behind her, a jellyfish drifts on currents Spock cannot see, pulled this way and that by streams of water. Sybok had had his own family to go to when Spock had been sent to Earth and no amount of logical argument had changed Amanda's decision. Distance had diminished the connection between them, and even upon Spock's return, it had never returned to what it was, never rekindled that flicker of Sybok's amusement, his anger, his frustration that had poked and prodded at Spock, at once fascinating and frightening.

Now half of his mind remains caught on Tabitha's, following her thoughts as she pads through the twists of the museum. With some effort he could likely read the list of exhibits as she does, but it has been so long since he has made any attempt to peer into another's mind with any real intent that the endeavor does not seem worthwhile, not when even with the distance between them he knows that she has no design to leave the museum, just to wander through it as she will. Once, he might have done the same, drawn by the blues and greens of the water, the bright gold of fish, but Nyota remains next to him.

"I'm sure your parents appreciate the time alone together," Nyota says. Spock turns. Again too quickly, in all likelihood, but Nyota is not watching him with an expression that suggests she knows she has landed upon a fact that lies so close to the truth. Instead she gives a light shrug. "I think my parents had a field day when they dropped me off at college. Yours have had a kid in the house for- how old are you? And what, ten years to go? You're nice to take her for a few days."

Spock had not considered this. An oversight perhaps, but hardly had Tabitha's visit been extended to him as an option, as a kind gesture he might make offer of, but a responsibility as unasked for as her birth was, a disruption brought in a head of dark hair, eyes that peered into his, thoughts that shoved up against his own, unbidden.

How long it has been now, that the memory of a time before her presence in his life seems dim, a faint sketch of a past that is muted with distance.

"What is a field day?" he asks.

"A celebration," she says.

"I see," he says, as if the idiom is at all sensible, as if the definition holds any measure of logic.

Never has he underestimated Nyota's intuition, though he had not guessed that the instinctual leaps she is able to make in the classroom, bent over a paper with him debating theories, would extend to his parents, tucked away as they were on Vulcan, or his sister, a voice through comm calls, a picture on a view screen, as she grew taller and taller over the years, moving from their mother's lap to her own chair. Never would he think that Nyota would apply her intelligence to the matters of his life, set her interest to him like this. No, it has been reserved for books, for papers, for journal articles she brings to him to discuss, not the details of his past.

He is suddenly entirely certain that given the chance he would lay all of his life bare, let her learn him with that focus she has, that singular, unerring dedication.

He could perhaps move closer to her, though a reason to do so besides simply desiring greater proximity does not readily come to mind. Nor is he certain to do so would be welcome. She has for so long so assiduously kept a distance between them that even here, away from uniforms and the halls of the Academy, he is not entirely sure is possible to overcome. Still, in his mind he cannot stop the spinning out of an idea of the next few moments, if he were to point to an exhibit, if she were to follow his gaze and if his hand were to touch to her shoulder blade, just there where the shape of it is visible through the fabric of her shirt. But what she might do then he cannot predict, not any more than he could bring himself to raise his hand.

At the back of his mind, a spark of annoyance pricks, a fast flare that he ignores until it grows so bright he registers all at once that he is not the one so afflicted, that it is not a well worn irritation with himself, a long trodden impatience that he cannot be who he wishes to be, only who he is.

Tabitha's exasperation threatens at anger and Spock straightens, unsure of when he bent so close to Nyota, his head lifting and his eyes finding the stretch of hallway Tabitha disappeared down.

"Excuse me a moment, please," he says, but Nyota follows him as he winds through the crowds, taking the same path along the halls that he knows Tabitha has just walked herself, that familiarity sitting deep in his mind next to where her irritation grates, hot and twisting.

When he finds her, Tabitha's hands are on her hips, and he well recognizes the set of her jaw.

"She says I cannot be unaccompanied," Tabitha says, speaking well before he has reached where she is standing. The woman in question is demarcated by the uniform of an aquarium staff member, though instead of explaining anything pertaining to the sharks that swim through the tanks set into the walls around them, she has her arms crossed over her chest, likely in response to whatever argument Tabitha has already leveraged against her.

Humans are rarely swayed by logic. Surely Tabitha knows this.

"This is your brother?" The woman's eyes flick towards Spock, and he feels that prick of assessment that rises in him whenever a human sees fit to track their eyes over him, as if they can discern what he has not yet divulged. "She can't be unsupervised."

The slide of Tabitha's irritation towards confusion is gradual but occurs all the same, a fall of the tenor of her mind but not the intensity with which she feels it, a hard shove that seems to beat in time to the moments in which he spends watching the woman.

"She was not," he says. Clearly, as he is here.

"She was here by herself," the woman says. Her eyes narrow. "Unaccompanied."

"I am with her." He tips his head towards Nyota. Needless, but apparently this woman is not entirely adept at grasping the obvious. "We both are."

"She can't be alone."

"Why?" he asks.

"For her safety."

He surveys the room, allowing his eyebrow to rise on the upswell of disbelief. "What here constitutes danger?"

"Sorry, but you and your friend have to be with her at all times," the woman says.

Spock turns to Nyota. Friend. The word rises through the layers of Tabitha's ire and Spock's own growing disquiet to lodge stiffly in his mind. She has been his student and his assistant and will be his colleague in the future, all definable, understandable. But friendship is another matter entirely.

A word that is perhaps not completely inaccurate. And yet, were he human, another assumption might have been made.

Of course, were he human he would have hardly allowed Tabitha to slip away from them.

"She is entirely capable of navigating the exhibits on her own," he states, though an appeal to rationality is obviously largely lost on the woman.

"She's a child."

Spurious reasoning, at best. "She did not create a disturbance."

"It's policy."

Spock casts about around them only to stop again, his argument fading on his lips. They are surrounded by humans. Throngs of them, which he of course has noticed, just as he has every day that he has spent on Earth, but yet unlike on campus, there are no Andorians to immediately point to, no Tellurites or Trills or even the odd Bajoran, and even Cadet Gaila is not there, so often an ubiquitous presence at Nyota's side.

No, there are just humans and their children, caught by their parents' hands, their bodies wrought with energy even despite such restraint.

"Why can I not be alone?" Tabitha asks, her face tipped up to his. Disappointment weights her mind, lays over that hot spark of annoyance to drag at the connection of their thoughts. Palpable is her desire to be unencumbered and her incredulity that she is not permitted to be.

"Unclear," he says.

The woman tightens her arms across her chest. "As I said, it's-"

"-A poorly conceived regulation that could substantially benefit from a more nuanced approach," Spock says. In his hand, Tabitha's shoulder is bony and small, easily engulfed in his palm as he steers her from the woman. "It is illogical."

His own frustration pushes back at Tabitha's, that flame of irritation that Tabitha first felt flaring bright in his own mind. It arcs between them on the walk to the lobby and does not fade as they step into the sun, the sweep of salt air coming off the ocean.

So often, Amanda would make statements about humans, broadly wrought generalizations that served as an explanation more than not, and often bordered on an excuse. The reason she imported coffee, why she enjoyed the holovids she did, the desire to have a glass of wine with dinner spelled out as simply, dismissively, what humans did. For so long, Spock had relied on these scraps of information, his trips to Earth so rare until he had joined the Academy, that he had allowed himself to believe that he fully understood the intricacies of his mother's people, that their behavior could so easily be explained by some innate humanness. Now, he at least recognizes the urge that rises in him to similarly explain to Tabitha what has just occurred, to dismiss it as human proclivity, but he cannot, not with Nyota there beside him.

In his silence, Tabitha simply stares at him until her mouth finally opens.

"What is it that humans do that requires supervision?" Tabitha asks of Nyota, not of him.

Nyota is watching them with an expression he cannot place and he does not try, the urge to decipher the knit of her forehead all at once beyond him.

"Well," Nyota says, and the pause that follows stretches for so long that Tabitha seems on the verge of repeating her question, likely more insistently this time. "I don't-I'm sorry."

The corners of Tabitha's eyes tighten and her confusion runs that much deeper, a strong course that is well worn in Spock's own mind, though by now long tinged with an equal measure of exhaustion.

Of course, Vulcan was like this too. Entirely, unendingly tiring.

"For what?" Tabitha asks.

"I-" Nyota turns towards him, as if he has an answer to give.

For too long, the moment hangs between them, until Nyota blinks and Spock lets his eyes shift away.

Were Nyota Vulcan, she could likely perceive his raised heartbeat, calculate the tension he has to consciously ease from his hands. As it is, she likely still sees too much.

But calm does not come, and though the rising tide of annoyance in Tabitha's mind dissipates into a quieter dismay, Spock is left just as vexed as he always is. So taxing, this attempt at navigation, this endeavor to play by unclear, inane rules.

"Our first semester, Gaila walked through a puddle," Nyota says, and Spock turns from his assiduous study of the sky, the point at which the ocean meets it, hazy and indistinct with cloud cover. "And when she took off her shoes and socks so that they would dry, the bookstore we were going to wouldn't let her in."

"I do not understand," Tabitha says. "Why did she not simply walk around it?"

"You'll have to ask her," Nyota says.

"Did you walk around it?"

"I did."

Spock can feel Tabitha's mind working, can sense the sigh that finally escapes her in his own chest. Her displeasure shifts hot in her mind. How long he was on Earth before that same discontent eased into fatigue, he does not now know. No, better to not pick apart those early months, but let them rest in the vestiges of time, long smoothed over by an acceptance that though he should be better able to navigate the planet, he is not.

"Did you enjoy the sharks?" he asks. They could go back. Though to do so would be to reckon with the urge that remains to allow her to return on her own, to not hover behind her in capitulation.

"No." Tabitha shakes her head. Already he can feel her thoughts begin to move on from her irritation, even if such redirection does not come as easily to him. Though he too once did not know to be so frustrated. There was a time when such moments were aberrations, until they became too clearly apparent, too repetitive to be anything but a pattern. "They were smaller than expected and not nearly on par with _le matayas_."

"Disappointing," Nyota says.

"Eminently so," Spock says.

"And no hammerheads, then?" Nyota asks. "Or Great Whites?"

For a long moment, Tabitha stares. Then, her forehead creases. "Human naming conventions could be substantially improved."

Her surprise when Nyota laughs is drawn not just upon her face, but the bright burst of bewilderment that flows through to Spock, carried over in a sharp peak of astonishment, even as Nyota covers her mouth with the back of her wrist, her eyes alight.

Understandable, he could tell his sister. Entirely reasonable to find a species so utterly and constantly perplexing.

But Tabitha's interest has drifted yet again, for, still watching Nyota with the customary curiosity Tabitha reserves for her, she says, "I am hungry."

How simple, the idea of food is. And how little he wants to eat.

"Dinner," he says, regardless, watching for any sign that Nyota might wish otherwise. If it exists and he cannot see it, he does not know, for it would have to be hidden under her continued smile, the way in which she falls into step beside them as they walk towards a mindlessly chosen restaurant, the aquarium left to their backs.

Inside, they are seated in a booth, much like the ones that line one edge of the mess hall. He is certain he never looked at such furniture with the raptness Tabitha summons, but likely the intention was the same, that close examination of its shape, the material that covers the seat, the care with which he first sat on it, back when he was meeting his classmates and feeling his way through the newness of his days at the Academy.

Nyota sits across from Tabitha. Spock does not allow himself to hesitate as he sits next to her instead of with his sister.

"My menu is unlike yours," Tabitha says, when her scrutiny of the restaurant has moved on from the seating. "And so too is my table setting."

"Here," Nyota says and passes her own menu across the table. When she takes the side of Spock's in her hand, he tips it towards her, sure that their arms are quite nearly touching. "And trust me, you have the better placemat."

"We'd like two more of those, please," Nyota says when the waiter comes by. She points towards the paper in front of Tabitha, and at the expression that crosses the man's face, she simply smiles.

"Are these activities?" Spock cannot help but ask when the papers are set before them, imperfectly covering the mats they were originally given.

"You connect the dots. And that one is a word search." Nyota's eyes dart between Spock and Tabitha's both. "It's- So there's a list. Turtle. And fish. And ocean." When Tabitha continues to simply look at her, Nyota's finger travels from where she has pointed to at her own placemat to Tabitha's. "Here-"

She pauses, her lips pursed and her finger poised, and it is only after a moment that she says, "Right. Here, shark," and draws her finger in a careful diagonal.

"And then what?" Spock asks.

"You circle it when you find it."

Tabitha leans closer, as if to better see. "Why?"

"To mark that that one's done." Another pause passes and Nyota points to the next word. "Kelp. Then you move on to the next one."

"But I have already found them all." Still, Tabitha picks up a crayon and drags it under 'Squid', only to stop when no mark is left. "These are dysfunctional."

"You have to peel the paper back," Nyota says.

"Is this red truly the color of Terran bricks?" Tabitha asks, peering around them as if the plain white walls of the restaurant will reveal masonry beneath them.

"It's very similar," Nyota says with a seriousness that makes Tabitha nod, her curiosity apparently appeased.

"Urchin," Spock says, when Nyota has circled 'coral.'

"Where?" she asks and he first points, and then lays his finger on the paper in front of her, close enough to her that the fabric of his sleeve shifts against his arm. She is using a blue crayon, 'aquamarine' from its label, held neatly in her fingers as if it is a stylus and the surface she draws on is her padd.

But it is not, and when he points once more, she draws an elongated oval around 'swordfish'. No, campus is far behind them, and further still are the stiffness of their uniforms, the regularity of their days. During the semester, dinner could not be a simple suggestion, but would need to be fit in between his lectures and meetings, her obligations to the Academy Chorale, the Xenolinguistics Club that she so often speaks of, her seminars and practicums and homework. There is no idleness to evenings on campus, nothing but the rigidity of the passing hours, packed so full as they are.

A gift, this is, to have yesterday and today with her. Were that there were more to come. Inconceivable to even admit to the desire, absurd to indulge himself in the idea, for it brings with it a surge of craving for a future with her that he has always regulated to so distant a possibility as to not even concede its existence.

And yet here she is beside him, drawing a circle around 'octopus', what could be an isolated, bright memory of a single day, or the initial step down a path he so fervently wishes to walk with her he cannot hardly bear to imagine it.

"Have you played hangman?" Nyota asks and turns her placemat over in a rush of air that pushes over Spock's wrist. He pulls his hand back. In front of him lay three crayons. Red, yellow, and deep purple. At these, he stares, not at her.

He feels his eyebrow rise as she explains the game, though it is Tabitha who says, "That is excessively violent."

"We can- There's also tic tac toe," Nyota offers quickly, her eyes darting towards Spock's and then back down again, the tip of her tongue dipping over her bottom lip. She clears her throat. "Sorry."

But Tabitha shakes her head and braces her elbows on the table in a way their mother would never have permitted, were she there. Spock cannot help but wonder if she played this as a child, similarly bent forward.

"T," Tabitha says and Nyota looks up again.

"One T," Nyota says. Spock has never seen her handwriting before, never watched as she shaped letters and allows himself to study the angle of her knuckle, the careful cross of the 'T'.

Surely this is an excuse to watch how she holds the crayon, this can be acceptable, under these bounds, to stare down at her hand, the movements it makes as she writes.

And yet Tabitha is watching him and, at his silence, prods at his thoughts. "It is your turn," she says.

"I see," he says. What she has discerned from his mind, he does not know and does not wish to contemplate. Perhaps it is opportune, the years between them, how she is drawn to a game played on a sheet of paper and not a curiosity at all that sits in his thoughts. "A."

When they have finished, Tabitha studies the paper and the mostly formed humanoid. "What is a pterodactyl?"

"A flying dinosaur," Spock answers.

"No." Inexplicably, Nyota is smiling. The crayon is still held in her long fingers. "They're not dinosaurs."

"They are not?"

Nyota settles her hands facedown on the table. She raises both eyebrows, her smile growing. "I think this might be the first time I've ever known something that you haven't."

He shakes his head. "That is untrue."

"Nope. First time." She is still smiling. "They're pterosaurs, they just lived at the same time as dinosaurs. Gaila found a book in the Academy library on it."

"You did not know that?" Tabitha asks him, and again he pulls at his thoughts, gathers his mind and turns to his sister. Once, she crawled through the hallway outside his childhood room, drawn by the sight of the shine of his uniform boots, the fall of his cadet reds in a sharp crease over them. How odd to think of that now, when she sits perched on the seat across from him, her surprise clear that he has not studied such topics as ancient Terran life.

"No."

"What else does Gaila know?" Tabitha asks Nyota.

"A lot." Nyota smiles once more. He is certain he was never so accustomed to seeing the expression on her face during their work, for all that he notices it now, each time drawing his attention quite despite himself.

"Did she wear shoes to the library?" Tabitha asks.

"She did," Nyota says.

Quiet falls until Tabitha retrieves another crayon and turns her placemat over to reveal its blank underside. Carefully she draws one line and then another. "Did you truly not enjoy school?"

The answer is the same for both of them, though the question, directed as it is at Nyota, prompts her to be the one to answer. "Not at all."

"Did Gaila?"

"You know, I'm not sure. I can ask her for you," Nyota says. Together, they watch Tabitha draw, selecting color after color until blues and greens mark over the paper. When she looks up once more, her eyes travel from Nyota down to the paper before her, which she immediately turns over.

A crayon rolls towards Tabitha's elbow. Spock reaches for it before it can fall from the table, and though he hands it back to her, she does not take it.

"I would like to read those books," Tabitha finally says.

"I cannot take you to the library," Spock says when Tabitha's eyes come up to meet his own. "I have a meeting tomorrow."

The fact of which now lodges in his thoughts. Inopportune to remember, the impending appointment fracturing the quiet of their table, this day that was so far from the fact of his waiting interview.

He does not allow himself to sigh. The appointment will come and pass again, much like today, though the anticipation for it hardly holds the pleasure with which he had risen just this morning, the picture of the day ahead alight in his mind. No, tomorrow will be far different, demarcated by a different sort of expectancy all together.

"Do I have to come?" Tabitha asks.

"No."

"May I remain in your apartment?" Tabitha asks.

"There is a Vulcan Embassy in the city," he says. He can bring her there, spur her on through her morning so as to ensure that they arrive in time. There, at least, she will be free within the confines of the building to do what she wishes, an allowance granted if not only by the understanding of the attendant adults, then certainly by her family name.

A logical destination. Not that Spock especially wishes to go there himself.

"No," Tabitha says.

"They have a subspace array. You can call Mother and Father."

"No," Tabitha says again.

"And their replicators are able to produce _Klitanta s'mun t'forati_ ," Spock says. Though he hardly knows if the dish is suitably rendered, as he has never partaken of a meal there.

"Please cancel your meeting."

"Tabitha, I cannot," Spock says. He wants very much to close his eyes. Instead, he takes in the way in which Tabitha is looking at him, the crease between her brows, the way her mind pushes at his. And then he nearly sighs. Their mother will hardly approve of his decision, but he knows he will capitulate to the argument he can already feel Tabitha creating, no logical reason she should not be allowed to remain in his quarters, no possible rationale that she will not be as able to pass the time there as anywhere else. Instead of letting her begin the long train of her reasoning, he says, "Yes. You may stay at my apartment."

"I'll take you to the library," Nyota says. He turns. Tabitha does as well, whatever words that rested on her lips held back for the moment. "If you'd still like to go."

"You do not have to do that," Spock says.

"I'd be happy to," she says.

Questions rise in him, all angled at the veracity of her statement and the desire for her to repeat it, as if he can better understand her sincerity, but Tabitha, still silent, nods once. In return, Nyota smiles at her, and then at him, and despite his surprise, it appears the matter is settled, if not only with Tabitha's unspoken acquiescence then the arrival of their food that redirects the conversation, though not Spock's attention from Nyota, nor his continued wonder at her offer.

When he pulls into the lot beside Nyota's dorm, it is with the buoyancy of seeing her again within hours. This he does not voice, but it sits in him all the same as he watches her unfasten her safety belt.

"Thank you," he says before she can reach for the door handle, only retroactively realizing the inadequacy of not having any specific subject, though Nyota apparently needs no further clarification, because she easily shakes her head, her earrings swinging against the line of her neck.

"Of course."

For too long they remain there, motionless and unspeaking. Every moment in which he is sure she will unlatch the door is met with a moment in which she doesn't, and when he is sure Tabitha will interrupt the quiet, instead she is motionless in her fatigue at the length of the day.

Finally, to break the silence that hangs as he simply watches Nyota and she looks back at him in turn, he says, "I would have presumed your talent with word searches would have been more exemplary."

She laughs, and he is not certain if she does sway towards him or if he simply wishes that were the case.

When her door shuts, he asks, "Is it truly acceptable for Nyota to take you to the library tomorrow?"

Tabitha does not answer but she does eventually nod.

"I apologize," he says even though it is not entirely necessary, the need to attend to a professional duty logical.

He does not immediately reverse out of the lot. Instead, he watches the empty lobby of Nyota's dorm. Were he to turn, he knows that Tabitha is staring out the window as well, her gaze far less intent. When she was born it was like a slice through his mind, a coiled, moving thing that bumped up against his thoughts, new and raw. It had been the same when he had been bonded to T'Pring, though that had never settled like Tabitha's mind against his own had. That had rubbed and itched and grated on him until severed, nothing like the low hum of his family.

In the rearview mirror, he catches her eye.

"Fraternization regulations are intended to ensure that propriety is maintained if personnel with a discrepancy in their ranks form a personal relationship," he says. He is still surprised at himself for reading them that morning. And yet, he cannot quite bring himself to call the impulse illogical. No, better to see if it might be needed at some future point. Which is logical.

Or perhaps it is an idea so steeped in hope as to be nearly unacceptable to indulge.

"But it would be illogical to favor an individual over another due to anything other than merit."

He nods. "I am aware."

She turns towards the window, the lights of the parking lot falling over her face as he watches her in the mirror.

"Earth is complicated," he finally says.

For a moment, her mouth purses. He wonders if she knows she is doing that. "That is apparent."

His apartment is dark when they reach it, and Tabitha does not wait for him to instruct the computer to raise the lights, instead immediately walking across the living room with her shoes still on. He reaches over her head to turn on his communications array without her asking and then retreats to the entryway to remove his own shoes, as the empty ringing echoes through the room, mirrored by the array pinging on Vulcan, unanswered.


	6. Chapter 6

When the woman behind the cafe's counter hands Spock the knife and fork he asked for, he is nearly certain that her expression indicates that she is refraining from an accompanying comment. Long ago, he had come to the conclusion that he would rather weather food on his hands than moments such as these, and soon thereafter simply ceased ordering dishes that required the request all together.

At their table, he hands the cutlery to Tabitha. She could not see over the counter to get the barista's attention, he had reasoned when he had risen from his chair, her examination of her bagel not resulting in her consumption thereof. No need to send her up there alone.

"I am not certain this is as exemplary as Mother insists," Tabitha says, as she finally takes her first bite. Though she cuts herself a second piece, this one held in front of her for her scrutiny before she places it too in her mouth. Chewing, she returns to the task of slicing off yet another arc of the bagel's imperfect circle, the motion knocking one of her pens to the floor.

Spock sets down his own fork next to his mug of tea, abandoning the piece of quiche in front of him in order to retrieve the pen before it rolls away.

"I believe that she employs considerably more cream cheese," he says, replacing the pen on top of the paper set before Tabitha.

"It is not a pleasant consistency."

"I agree."

If Tabitha attracts the attention of other breakfast patrons, cutting her breakfast as she is, Spock does not look up to find out. Instead, he once more flicks through his resume before closing the document and pushing the padd aside. He does not allow himself to pick it up again. It is needless, of course, as he has had the document memorized since he last updated it, adding his most recent publications, the additional classes he taught the previous semester, the successful completion of a number of experiments. 'Experience with personnel management," he had also inserted, though perhaps having Nyota in his office each week hardly qualified, self guided and industrious as she was. Still, it must be of some import, though how much and how significant, he does not know.

Carefully, he eats a bite of his meal only to put his fork down and not take a second one. He dismisses the urge to brush his hand over his lap as if crumbs have fallen onto his neatly pressed pants.

"Well, look at you," he hears. Belatedly does he realize it is he whom the voice addresses, and even then it takes him a moment longer to turn in his chair to see Gaila and Nyota winding their way towards them through the crowd of tables. "Nice duds."

"Hello," he says.

"I came too," Gaila announces, as if her initial greeting did not make this apparent.

"What are duds?" Tabitha asks, another piece of bagel speared on her fork and her eyes on Gaila. A smile does not threaten over Tabitha's face, but Spock can clearly feel her delight, one that grows all the brighter as Gaila smiles at her.

"I do not know," Spock says and pulls his attention from Nyota to look again at his uneaten breakfast, not the skirt that falls to her knees, the pattern of her shirt, how the cuffs of her jacket sit against her wrists.

"Clothes," Nyota says. She stands directly next to him, so that when her hand rises to touch the front of her own coat, the movement brings her elbow near to his arm. "Hi."

"This," Gaila says, and as if Nyota's explanation were not sufficient, she waves her hand over him. If Spock had thought to consume more of his meal, he certainly does not wish to now, for he is entirely too preoccupied with the itch that has crept up across his shoulders. Twice now he has considered that he should have worn his instructor's uniform, a debate that began as he attempted to fall asleep and continued until he finally compelled himself to dress in the morning light, only to have that uncertainty crop up once again, this time as soon as they were far enough from his apartment to preclude returning to change. The fact that he still finds his decision logical should prevent further deliberation, and yet does not, only increasing the palpability of that frustration.

Tabitha had no such compunctions, the same singular jacket she wore from home pulled on as he prompted her from his quarters and the casual, comfortable clothes of a civilian worn beneath it. Surely a trip to the library does not necessitate any particular preparation, but he cannot help but think of her there where cadets and officers so commonly wear their uniforms, stiff and neat.

Of course, Nyota is dressed simply, in yet another outfit that is not that of a Starfleet cadet. Though he might have predicted as much, as she hardly has any professional obligations waiting for her. No, only the commitment she volunteered for, guiding Tabitha through her morning because Spock cannot.

With a casualness that Spock is hard pressed to believe anyone but her can manage, Gaila scrapes an empty chair across the floor and drops into it. Quickly, Tabitha turns over the paper before her, her small palms spread over the surface as if Gaila or Nyota were inclined to look through it.

"I wanted to hang out with you again," Gaila says, her manner far more serious than is typical.

A crease forms between Tabitha's brows. "You did?"

"Absolutely."

"Truly?"

"Of course."

"Nyota said you took issue with the jellyfish," Tabitha says, scrutinizing Gaila much as she did her bagel.

"Oh, I absolutely did," Gaila says. "One hundred percent, even if they have fabulous tentacles."

Still watching Gaila with wide eyes, Tabitha slowly nods once, and then a second time more emphatically. "Very well. You may accompany us."

"Excellent." Gaila pats the table with both hands. "Now. Coffee. Ny and I were up all night." She turns to Spock. "We had some things to talk about."

She stands with no further explanation, halfway to the counter before he can inquire. Beside him, Nyota is silent. She hardly appears tired, no sluggishness in her movements, nothing but the cheer he always associates with her.

She glances at him and then away again, back to where she was looking at the table. She would know what clothing would be acceptable to wear. Of course she would, this and so much else as well.

His stomach threatens to turn over, and the cause is hardly hunger, no matter how he would prefer to attribute it to such. An unacceptable psychosomatic reaction, so unneeded when he should instead be able to focus, to coalesce his thoughts around the coming day.

"You ready?" Nyota asks, as if she can perceive his thoughts, her chin tipped towards the padd in front of him.

More likely, his face carries traces of his apprehension, despite any attempt to keep such churning internal. An imperfect effort, as always, and now she is looking at him, awaiting a response that he would truly rather not give.

How odd, to finally have a subject that he does not wish to discuss with her. How abnormal, after how long he has sought out any chance for further conversation, any possible opportunity to talk with her of anything.

"Yes," he says. Vulcans do not lie, so the word must therefore be true.

The corners of her mouth curl. "Did you practice? I always do. Gaila finds it incredibly annoying."

He has to consciously ease the tension that creeps into his back. Uncalled for, his body's reaction, that tightening of his muscles, as if he is priming for an hour far worse than a simple discussion.

"Practice?" he asks. It is not necessary to repeat her. She knows what she has asked.

"Oh, you know, what do you want to be doing in five years, what's your greatest weakness, all of that."

"We know the answer to that one," Gaila says, two cups in her hand, as she approaches the table with a look leveled at Nyota, eyebrows raised and her head tipped to the side. "He doesn't have any."

"Gaila," Nyota says, and though Spock looks to her for an explanation, she stares at Gaila instead of him, her eyes falling shut for a moment before they open again.

"I heard you're going to your grandmother's soon,' Gaila says to Tabitha, failing to acknowledge how Nyota watches her while also handing Nyota a cup of coffee. "What are you drawing? Because it should be a wolf."

"A wolf?" Tabitha asks.

"Keeping with the theme. Nyota knows all about it. Can I see?" Gaila asks.

"No."

"Ok." Gaila blows over the surface of the liquid in her cup. "Nice bagel. Sesame?"

"It is," Tabitha says, and then, with her fingers curled over the corner of her drawing, she pauses and lifts just enough that Gaila can peer under it, which she does with a squint and an open mouth. Through the back of the paper, Spock can see that it is the same drawing Tabitha was working on the night she arrived, the shape of the animal clearly visible, if not its details.

"Wow." Gaila leans further forward. "Fantastic."

"There is a mistake," Tabitha says, one small finger extended to point.

"I can't see it."

"There."

"Where?" Gaila squints harder, her face a mass of deep green furrows.

"It is right there."

"You think that's a mistake?" When Tabitha nods, Gaila leans even closer, a hand cupped around her mouth. "I think it looks great like that."

Nyota is smiling, her cheek a curve, turned as she is towards them, and her teeth catching at her lip.

Carefully, Tabitha lays her drawing back down and again her uncertainty pricks at Spock, simmering just there under her thoughts of Gaila, of Nyota, of her bagel, the cafe, the drawing before her. But this time it mingles with his own, a sureness rising in him that is he far more ill-prepared for the day ahead than he ever could have anticipated.

Illogical, to pursue the opportunity, if the interview affects him thusly.

Of course, serving as First Officer hardly includes submitting oneself to these sorts of examinations.

How utterly human, to evaluate an applicant in a setting so far removed from the actual duties of a job, so as to fail to accurately assess their competency for it.

Before he can obtain Nyota's attention again and ask her for further details, an explanation he sorely needs, a hand falls on the back of his chair.

He straightens. Quickly. Too fast, perhaps, but those fingers threaten to touch his back.

"Great minds," Pike says from behind Spock, his voice familiar and his hand still precipitously close. "What're the chances."

Considerable, and likely a probability he should have assessed before offering to meet Nyota here. An oversight, to be sure, one he must now endure.

"Sir," he says.

"Lieutenant Commander," Pike says in an even easy, greeting. "Cadets."

How Pike knows them, knows that they are even in Starfleet what with their civilian clothing, Spock is unsure. He is further uncertain if he is expected to remain where he is, rather than stand so he can face Pike and not have him at his back, but the hand holding his chair has yet to move.

"Is the coffee here any good?" Pike asks and then does not wait for an answer, his elbow pointing towards the counter. "Anyone want anything?"

"No, thank you, sir," Nyota says.

"A croissant. Almond. A good one, with lots of them sprinkled on top," Gaila says.

"Coming right up," Pike says, and when he returns with two, one set in front of Gaila and one apparently for himself, Spock has managed to do no more than adjust his uniform jacket and eye how Tabitha's pencils are so scattered over the tabletop.

Pike pulls a chair over by hooking his foot through its leg, a wide grin on his face that he directs towards Tabitha. "Hi, there."

Tabitha watches him, her eyes wide and her hands still spread over her drawing, palms pressed tight to the paper.

"You must be here with Spock," Pike says as he sips at his coffee.

"Logical," Gaila says, tearing her croissant into small pieces.

"This is my sister," Spock says, though only when he has done so does he realize how belated it comes. "Tabitha." Yet another moment passes before he remembers himself and what it is that he is meant to say next, the form of introduction expected from him. "This is Captain Pike."

"Nice to meet you," Pike says. The _ta'al_ Pike offers her, while not strictly faultless, is recognizable and at the very least serviceable.

Tabitha has to raise her hand from the tabletop to return it and only does so slowly, her hand barely coming high enough to complete the gesture before she tucks both her hands in her lap, hidden by the table's edge.

"Here for a visit?" Pike asks her.

"Yes," Spock answers when Tabitha does not speak.

"Good timing," Pike says to her. "With classes being out for a few days."

Spock sips at his tea. It has cooled, significantly. "It is."

"And how have you been doing?" Pike asks, turning to Nyota. Tabitha's head dips downward without Pike's focus on her, her hands still in her lap and now her shoulders curled forward.

Sit up, their father would tell her, a touch to her back to prompt her upwards. Spock can nearly feel those fingers pressed to his own spine.

"Well, thank you," Nyota says.

"How are classes."

"Good. Very interesting."

"That's what all the cadets say," Pike says and takes a bite of his croissant.

"The party line," Gaila says. She picks up Tabitha's fork and chooses from among the shreds of croissant she has arranged on her plate, to piece one upon the tines. "Here. Delicious."

In two bites, Pike finishes his pastry and stands again, his hand braced over the rim of his coffee cup. Surely it is an illogical way to hold it, no ability to drink from it with his palm spread like it is.

"How long can I have him?" Pike asks Tabitha, who sits, silent and still.

"We have all day, sir," Nyota finally says.

"C'mon then," Pike says, his hand once more resting on the back of Spock's chair. "Easier than meeting at HQ, isn't it."

Likely the Captain is correct, though the logistics of traveling across the city seem easier than attempting to rise from the now crowded table. He should not simply leave his dishes. Surely the Captain will wait while he clears them.

"Can I eat that?" Gaila asks when Spock reaches for his plate.

"You wish to?" he asks.

Nyota touches her temple. "We just had breakfast."

"Absolutely," Gaila says.

"I see," Spock says, as if he does.

Once again confused, Tabitha looks at him, but Spock has nothing to give her in terms of explanation.

And other words come no more easily. Humans often offer inane words of farewell, even for such brief separations as this, and he considers extending the same to Tabitha, though what precisely he would say he does not know. The abutment of her mind against his own will have to suffice as it would at home, that flicker that ebbs and flares in turn, constant and unabating.

If the silence is noteworthy to either Pike or Nyota, Spock cannot determine.

Outside, he blinks against the sudden brightness of the day. Pike rubs his hands together, looking first one direction up the street and then the other.

"Ready?" he asks, and Spock can only nod.

"Spock," he hears before they have taken more than a half dozen steps. Tabitha stands outside the door but only barely so, the door held open by her presence there. When she does not come further towards him, he has to walk to her instead. For a moment her thoughts flare bright, a firm push against his. Her drawing is held out to him, carefully extended. "I do not wish to carry this around all day."

Such prescience could have come earlier when they were leaving his apartment, though he could have anticipated such as well and had not. The glass door slides shut behind Tabitha and through it he can see her retake her seat at the table. She picks up the fork that is still propped on her plate and eats the croissant Gaila placed there, though from the angle he is at, Spock cannot see her reaction to it, only knows of her enjoyment through the span of thought they share between them. He tucks the drawing against his padd and does not acknowledge how Pike's eyes travel towards it.

"I didn't know you had a sister," he says.

It is in Spock's personnel file, listed there along with his place of birth, his parent's occupations, and the address of their house in Shi'Kahr. Of course, Spock hardly accessed that same file when he hired Nyota, irrelevant as it was to her anticipated performance as his assistant, which does not necessarily explain how an equal omission from Pike leaves him with a slight edge of disappointment.

Spock pushes it away. Unneeded, especially now, to be so distracted.

"Not many commissioned officers have cadets for friends," Pike says, even as Spock attempts to locate an appropriate response to his first statement. "That one, the Orion, what's her name?"

There is only one Orion in the student body, and even then Gaila still stands alone as not only a student but what he has heard Nyota refer to as a force of nature. He has met few officers who do not know of her in one way or another, her ties across campus running deep.

"Cadet Gaila," he says.

"And the other one?"

"Cadet Uhura."

"Right, right. She was out in Iowa with us a while back. Very interested in the ship."

"I am aware."

"She's in Ops?"

"Communications. Xenolinguistics, specifically."

"Which is ops," Pike says, half of his mouth pulled into a grin. "Though, yes, specificity and all."

Spock shifts his padd into his other hand. "She worked for me last semester."

"Ok," Pike says, what he thinks of this information no more discernible from his voice or expression than it is from his thoughts.

There are more exacting details Spock could distill but he does not, Pike's attention already on the street before them and then the cars themselves. When he jogs through a break in the traffic, Spock is left with no choice but to follow.

"Fancy a walk?" Pike calls back to him.

"A walk?" Spock repeats when he reaches the sidewalk on the other side of the street.

"It's nice out."

The fog has only recently lifted and still the damp of it remains, clinging wet to Spock's skin in a manner most unpleasant. "If you would like."

"How old is she?"

"Cadet Uhura?"

"Your sister. Ten?"

"She is eight."

"Get to see her very often?"

Pike walks quickly, far quicker than most humans. Spock does not know the definition of 'often.' "When I am able to return home, or when she visits."

Which should be obvious, and therefore not incumbent upon Pike to ask. Spock picks up his pace to match the Captain's.

"Does she get out here much?"

"A few times." Three, specifically, though Spock is unclear if he should offer such detail.

"When was the last time you were home?"

"Nineteen months ago." And four days, six hours, seventeen minutes. Directly after his deployment on the _Lexington_ , which Spock would much rather discuss.

"That's a while, then." Pike nods to a passing group of officers, none of whom Spock recognizes. They are wearing their active duty uniforms, bright blues and golds against the muted clothing of other pedestrians. "The _Enterprise_ is slated for deep space missions."

"I am aware." It was one of the reasons he had applied, and he begins to formulate a way in which to impress this upon Pike, only to not have the opportunity to do so, for Pike is again speaking.

"Not much chance to see the family." Spock nods, though Pike is a step ahead of him and cannot see it. Again, he does not have an opening in which to speak, because suddenly Pike turns towards him. "But you're interested in the position?"

Spock feels astonishment color his face. Surely that is obvious. "Yes."

But his pause was too long, a hesitation too lengthy for Pike's question, and apparently an answer was leveraged in the silence that so briefly hung, for Pike says, "You don't sound convinced."

That is not Spock's fault. He takes a breath. "I assure you that I am."

"You applied after pretty much everyone."

Nearly everyone, or everyone. Pike is unclear. Spock is unsure of why such vagueness continues to surprise him.

"I took the time to consider whether I was qualified for the position."

"And?"

And Spock had decided the assessment was best left to Pike and his hiring committee rather than Spock, as he has never staffed a starship. Which is a logical deduction, and yet Spock is not entirely certain this explanation would be warranted or appreciated.

"I have demonstrated a capacity for carrying out scientific protocols in a way that would be useful to the _Enterprise_ 's mission," Spock says instead.

"Your resume was quite detailed," Pike says, and Spock cannot determine if his voice conveys negativity at this fact or not, if Spock should have left out the specifics, or if they were appreciated. "Can I ask you something?"

That is, ostensibly, the purpose of this, though admittedly Spock had predicted a desk between them, the quiet of an office, not the whizz of traffic, nor Pike weaving through other pedestrians.

"Of course," Spock says.

"Why'd you come to Starfleet?" Pike tips his head to the side. "If you wanted science, you could be at the VSA right now."

"At the time it was a logical decision." He had had a plan. One thought out and clear, a path to walk down that led to a destination he could already see.

How long ago, that was. How incredibly, utterly certain he had been of his future, how confident he was in his logic.

"I'm sure it was." Pike continues to simply look at him. Spock has always disliked it, and now it makes him want to shift his feet, once again adjust how he holds his padd.

It is the silence that follows that prompts Spock to consider that a more detailed answer was required. Irrational, for if Pike wanted particulars he could ask after them, but all the same, Spock says, "I had opportunities here foreclosed on Vulcan."

"And how have you found it?"

He pauses. "Unpredictable."

To his surprise, Pike grins. "Sounds about right. C'mon, let's go down to the water. I've had enough sitting behind a desk."

…

When his call goes unanswered, Spock simply stands on the stretch of sidewalk where Pike left him. A half a block away, the Captain jogs across the street, again without waiting for pedestrians to be allowed to do so. He can feel the thrum of Tabitha's thoughts now, as he has all morning, sharp pricks of excitement and the occasional wash of bewilderment that have recently settled down into a steady hum of concentration. His prodding at her goes unnoticed or ignored. He could determine which but he does not, instead watching the Captain disappear into the crowd.

The buzz in his hand draws Spock's mind back from the conversation they just finished. Illogical, regardless, to recount a discussion that just commenced.

"Hello," he says automatically, a flick of his wrist opening his comm.

"Spock," he hears, but the voice is not Nyota's.

"Mother." Jarring, slightly, her voice in his comm here in the bright of the sun, the pulse of the city around him.

"How are you?"

"Acceptable." He turns, as if this will allow him more privacy, out here in public. "Yourself?"

Only in the asking does he realize that the question is what he has heard humans refer to as 'loaded', though it is too late now to do anything about that. Instead he waits, half shifted towards a bank of storefronts, Terran clothes on display in one, a mock exhibition of home goods in another.

"Fine, fine," she says and then pauses and adds, "Better," a qualification he well could have done without. "We're packing now. There's a shuttle leaving tonight. I thought we'd get to Earth a bit early and take Tabitha off your hands."

"You will be here tomorrow?" he asks though this is clear, obvious, easily evident from her statement.

"I know you have work to do."

"I have finished it," he says.

"Oh, of course you have. How is she? That was quite the queue of messages."

"Adequate." Again he nudges at Tabitha's thoughts, to similarly no avail. "She is currently preoccupied."

"Tell her to call me later, if she likes. It's quiet without her here."

He nods, even though his mother can hardly see the gesture. In the window, his reflection stares back at him, the black of his uniform a stark contrast to the colorful, summer clothing of the Terrans who step around him.

"You know that I miss you too, Spock," his mother says.

He reaches his quarters quickly, with no need to walk slower for Tabitha, or pause as she so often does. Inside, the rooms are silent and again he opens his comm, dialing Nyota as he toes off his boots. He can leave her a message. He has done so once before, on an evening he had been left with a question over an essay she had graded. Then, as now, he silently prepares what it is that he will say. On Vulcan, there is often no need to record one's voice for another, the act of a missed call sufficient to prompt its return.

"Sorry," Nyota says when she answers. "We were-"

"Spock do not interrupt," Tabitha says, her voice more distant and tinny than Nyota's. "We are busy."

"I-" Nyota laughs, a breathy sound through his comm. "I might have told your sister about my research."

"And?" he prompts. She had explained it to him months ago now, back when she was putting together her project proposal. For days, he had walked into his office only to find her already there with padds and filmplasts spread over her desk. She would whisk them away, shuffle them into her bag and have Advanced Morphology readings in front of her before he could ask after what it was that brought her to work so early in the morning. Finally, he had simply arrived early one day and inquired, which led to a discussion that had threatened to extend well into their morning. That day he had stayed late to finish the work he had not gotten to due to their conversation, the sun setting through the windows of his office and casting rose pink light over her desk, empty as it was.

"She very logically pointed out she would make an excellent participant. And we're not done with the interview yet. But if you need her back-"

"-We are not finished, Spock," Tabitha calls.

"We have a bit to go," Nyota confirms. "I don't know if you two had afternoon plans."

Around him, the stillness of his quarters sit in contrast to the image he has already conjured of the two of them. Likely, they are in one of the study rooms in the library, and if not there then in one of the language labs in the Xenolinguistics building. He sets his padd on his table and Tabitha's drawing on top of it.

The resemblance to a _le-mataya_ has shifted slightly in the work Tabitha has completed in the intervening days. It is more like a wolf, per Gaila's suggestion, or perhaps a bear.

"We did not," he says.

"I'm happy to bring her by when we're done."

Happy to do it. A phrase so often bandied about by humans and just as frequently Nyota herself- grading, preparing slides, reviewing readings, handling his office hours when he was called away. Always with a smile, one he attempts to picture now.

"I do not wish to impose on your time," he says. His quarters are so quiet. How loud Tabitha is, even in the background of his and Nyota's conversation, none of that similar noise here with him. "I can meet you. Or pick her up now."

"You're not," she says. "And anyway, I want to hear how it went with Pike."

Logical, then, though as he folds his comm closed he cannot help but survey his apartment and try to reconcile the thought of Nyota there. His visitors have been few and far between, though now it hardly looks it, a pair of Tabitha's shoes tucked next to his own, a sweater of hers folded on the arm of the couch, and pens and pencils on his table, his desk, one even on the kitchen counter. He picks it up and rolls it between his fingers. Somewhere on campus, Tabitha has another handful with her, likely stuck into her jacket when she left the cafe with Nyota and Gaila, though by now they could be scattered across the city, if the trail of them across his quarters is any measure of her care.

He collects them, arranging them in a straight line on the corner of his desk and setting her half finished drawings beside the pens. Already he knows he will not spend the afternoon working, that his ability to concentrate is compromised likely beyond reclamation. When he stops moving about his apartment, imagined pictures of the halls of the _Enterprise_ rise to mind, and so he continues to neaten Tabitha's belongings, the padds on his bookshelf that she pulled out one by one and replaced in a different order than he keeps them, the cupboards that she has rummaged through for a snack, the dishes by his sink that need to be cleaned, so many of them, when he habitually runs the single fork and plate he uses under the sonics immediately after a meal.

When he is finished cleaning, there is still no chime at his door, and he stands in the center of his kitchen, looking around as if what to do next will occur to him. Illogical, exceptionally so, especially as every time he lands upon an idea, he dismisses it. He cannot go to the gym, as he does not know when Tabitha will be returning; he does not wish to meditate, with the similar threat of imminent disruption, and he remains not overly inclined to attempt to work.

It is not quite habit yet, but he does turn towards the couch, as if he would see Tabitha perched there upon it, but it is as empty as it has been since they left that morning for the cafe.

Once, the house on Vulcan had been similarly quiet. A calm before the storm, his mother had called it, rocking Tabitha in her arms as she paced the length of the hallway, from the kitchen down to Sarek's study and back. The door had been closed, his father hidden behind a thick weight of wood that Spock knew did not entirely drown out the noise of a restless, fussy infant.

But storms did not arrive to Vulcan like they do here on Earth, no hot haze of stagnant humidity heralding the arrival of thunderclaps and bolts of lightning streaked across the sky. At home they rolled in across the expanse of the desert, gathering momentum in a grey cloud that cast no rain.

More often than not, a wailing Tabitha would be tipped towards him, her screaming only increased as Amanda had asked for a moment, two, a shower, a chance for a minute of quiet, leaving him there staring down at an open, gummy mouth, a body that fit the length of his forearm and yet raged with a twisting shriek that needed both hands to manage. Perhaps he should have told Pike of that, standing on the veranda with his sister a contortion in his arms, a greater force in her than anything Spock could have imagined.

That and more comes to him now in the quiet of his rooms, a rush of words that had nearly abandoned him while speaking with the Captain. Spock could have impressed much more upon Pike than he likely did. He is well versed at speaking of his work, the experiments he runs, the papers he writes, the contributions he could make to an exploratory mission. But Pike had not asked of that. Instead they had walked well across the city on a path that Spock could make no sense of and discussed mutual colleagues, their time on the _Lexington_ , the upcoming recommissioning of the _Hood_. At most, Spock had been able to outline his work on the Kobayashi Maru, but even then Pike had only nodded, a silence Spock had not been prepared for.

He had not been able to make sense of the Captain's reaction, though now a creeping sensation settles over him, one that he is hard pressed to dispel and that carries with it disappointment that rises thick and fast. It was an anticlimactic conversation, one that he might have predicted, given his lack of relevant experience for the position. Likely, Pike had been speaking the truth in simply wishing for a morning spent out of doors and a chance for a walk, and Spock provided that with no intention on the Captain's part to ever engage him in a discussion on the position Spock applied for. He was not qualified for it when he submitted the application, and that has hardly changed in the intervening days, his experience here on Earth not a sufficient substitute for officers who have served on deployments far longer than the opportunity he had on the _Lexington_. It was illogical to even apply, a fact he well knew and now seems to be thoroughly confirmed.

He closes his eyes and allows himself the indulgence of a single drawn out breath before he begins opening the cupboard he just organized, his hands busy, even if he cannot similarly occupy his mind with such a benign subject as cooking.

Tabitha does not knock on the door before entering, though he does not know why he expected her to, when even their mother abandoned that practice eventually. When he was a child she would still sometimes raise her fist, tap out an announcement of her presence, a habit later replaced with the far more ordinary convention of simply entering.

Behind Tabitha, Nyota waits in the doorway.

"Hi," she says when she sees him and quickly he wipes his hands on a dish towel, straightens his shirt before he can even ascertain if that action was needed, if the fabric was worked into folds, if it did not already lay flat and neat.

"Sign this," Tabitha instructs, her arms full of padds and a filmplast thrust out towards him.

"Remove your shoes," he tells her, when she tracks the wet of outside across the floor. Still, she holds out the filmplast, and he takes it by rote, unseeing. "Please," he says to Nyota. "Come in."

Nyota does, one step and then another. "What are you making?"

"Spock." Tabitha taps the filmplast.

" _Pok tar_." He gestures with the filmplast to the pan on the stove, needlessly. "It is Vulcan."

Also unnecessary. She is able to translate, entirely capable of understanding.

How odd she looks there, with the backdrop of his apartment behind her. How strange and peculiar in a way that he wants nothing more than to study, examine until he has learned each and every particular of the scene.

"It smells great," she says.

Tabitha moves in front of him. "Your signature is required."

It is irrational, to be so caught on the incongruity of Nyota scanning his living room.

"How was your day?" he asks. A simple question at least, one he has asked her numerous times, posed in the late afternoon when she would appear in the doorway to his office, bearing a question for him, or a thought regarding their work she had not previously mentioned, or a stray idea she had carried with her until she could stand there, her shoulder on the doorjamb and her bag resting at her hip as they spoke.

"Good, good," she says. "We had a nice time."

"Spock," Tabitha says, more insistently this time, her hand closing over the side of the filmplast he holds.

"It's the consent form for my project," Nyota says and takes another step into his apartment only to stop again, this time with a downward look at her sandals.

Spock looks too, at her feet there on his floor, the way her hair swings forward to nearly obscure her face. It must be soft to the touch. He has always thought so.

He looks away.

"We are going to eat soon," he says to Tabitha as she tips her padds onto his table, laying them out one at a time, scattered over the surface.

"I am not hungry."

"She had quite a bit for lunch," Nyota says.

"We went to the mess hall. Please complete the form."

"Mother and Father are arriving tomorrow," Spock says and holds out the filmplast to her. When she does not take it, he lays it atop of her padds. "They can sign it then."

"But Gaila is going to take me to see the sea lions in the bay," Tabitha says. "She could not accompany us to the library because she had a thing, but she does not have one tomorrow."

"They will be here in the morning," Spock says, and when Tabitha does not stack her padds, he does so for her. "Mother says to call her, if you wish."

Halfway to his monitor, Tabitha turns around.

"But I will not have finished my reading." Tabitha reaches out to the handful of padds, each emblazoned with the crest of Starfleet Academy. "I cannot read all of these tonight."

"You know what? Keep them. You can give them to Spock when you're done." Nyota turns to him, a smile on her face. "It'll give me a good excuse to track you down next semester."

Next semester. Still it feels so far away but were he to, he could count out the handful of days left until it begins. No, they will not see each other often. Hardly at all, especially in contrast to the hours they spent together. Nyota will be occupied with her classes and her work and her research, and Spock will be back to the routine of the term, lectures he has given before and seminars he has already led, done over again for the second, third, fourth times. He long ago stopped reviewing the readings he assigned, having read them over so often that the need to refresh himself no longer existed. So too does he have his slides memorized and many of the exams he gives only require cursory changes to the questions. He resists the urge to let out a long breath. It will be a similarly tedious semester as the last one, and this time without the presence of Nyota there in his office with him.

"Thank you for spending the day with her." He does not need to, but he tips his head towards Tabitha, where she has pushed his desk chair aside to stand in front of the monitor.

"Oh, of course. It was fun." Nyota smiles at Tabitha's back. In front of her, her hands are clasped, long fingers laced together, which Spock does not allow himself to look at, the line of her knuckles, the dark blue of her nails. "We had a good time. I think. I did, at least."

How curious, to not be able to tell, though he should not be surprised. Nyota is hardly privy to the delight that simmers beneath Tabitha's thoughts. But of course, her expression is as blank as ever as she begins the call to home. "She did as well," he says.

"Good," Nyota says. She adjusts her feet, balancing on one foot, crossing her ankles and dragging the toe of her sandal across his floor. He wonders if there will be a mark left there. "That's good."

"Hi Spock," his mother says, her voice crossing the room. He does not allow himself to start, though Nyota does, her head turning and then a slight, careful lean forward as if to better see the monitor.

"I don't-" Nyota takes a step to the side only to immediately stop, again casting a look at her shoes. "I don't mean to intrude."

"It is no matter," he says. When she looks towards the door, he quickly adds, "It is rather impossible to also speak to my parents when Tabitha is. But if you have prior obligations-" He nods. He understands. "I did not intend to take up so much of your day."

"No, no, I'm free." She lifts her shoulder to her ear. "Vacation. And anyway, Gaila abandoned me at the library steps."

"As Tabitha said."

"Right."

She once more looks around his apartment, so he does the same, alighting on the possessions he always sees. What she might find in the familiarity of his rooms he cannot determine, nothing revealed in her expression or her silence, how she touches the front of her jacket lightly and then drops her hand back to her side. The monitor is still lit up, his mother's face on the screen where the curve of Tabitha's shoulder does not obscure, and her voice filling the room when Tabitha is not speaking. Whether she is looking beyond Tabitha, Spock cannot see and does not particularly wish to ascertain.

"What books did Tabitha choose?" he asks.

"Oh," Nyota says, turning away from her examination of his dining table. Her hands smooth down her skirt. "One on pterosaurs and another on the Jurassic Period."

"Nothing on Terran birds?"

"Well, I hear she's already an expert," Nyota says with her customary smile. She is so expressive, as always, her features moving as she speaks, her eyes bright as she looks at him. And now, her hands do not still, one reaching forward only to drop back to her side again. "How was it today?"

Words spring to mind before they flit away again, a host of descriptors, of answers. He is not entirely certain he wishes to tell her, and yet she is watching him, certainly waiting for a response.

Surely his mother can hear them, though again he does not look. No, her attention is on Tabitha, despite how he and Nyota must fill the background of her screen, clear evidence of how they linger in his entryway.

"Interesting," he finally offers.

"I've heard Pike's like that," Nyota says. "Unconventional."

An understatement, certainly. "Indeed."

"Did it go well?"

On the stove, the pot bubbles. Spock can hear the roll of it and smell the increase in fragrance as the mixture heats. He takes a step backwards towards the kitchen only to pause and then to tip his head towards the stove. He needs to stir it. Should have already, in all likelihood. Over Tabitha's shoulder he again can see his mother's face, the soft notes of her voice.

"Come in," he says. "If you would like."

The sliced _fori_ have softened considerably. Soon they will be finished and he will add the _birkeen_. Likely, Tabitha will still be speaking with Amanda then, their conversation stretching, as so often happens. Beside him, Nyota watches him prod a _mashya_ , the motion causing it to sink beneath the surface of the broth only to bob upwards once more.

"It's a common dish in Shi'Kahr," he says. Nyota is shorter without shoes on, reaching to his shoulder and not higher. Of course he knew this, her toes dug into sand and her face tipped upwards to talk to him in a way that never occurs in their uniforms. But here it is apparent in an entirely different way, so close to him as she is.

The silverware drawer is accessible without reaching past her and he selects a spoon that he extends to her in anticipation of the question he is sure she is poised to ask, her curiosity unflagging, indefatigable.

"That's good," she says, her other palm held flat under the spoon to catch a drip that does not come.

"It is our mother's recipe."

"All the best meals are." She moves to set the spoon on his counter only to hesitate, looking over his counter with the utensil hovering there, just above it. He takes the spoon from her, his fingers around the neck of it, well away from her grip on the handle and where her mouth touched, that purse of her lips.

There are no kitchens in the dorms, cadets regulated to the mess hall and whatever off-campus restaurants and cafes they visit on their own time. For those years Spock's diet had consisted of protein bars he ate in the library, cups of _plomeek_ soup he pulled a spoon through while bent over his padd, salads that he would assemble from Terran vegetables, those imported from off world wilted by the time they reached the campus, and those that were replicated always slightly off in their texture and taste. He is certain he was not alone in the cadets whose trips home started and ended in their family's kitchens, though his had Tabitha there, crawling across the floor, her hand reaching for the red hem of his pant-leg.

He can still see her from the kitchen, the edge of her arm and the back of her head.

"What did Tabitha make of the mess hall?" he asks. Odd that she was there without him, a part of campus she has now seen that should he ever accompany her to in the future, she will be familiar with.

"Remember when you finished installing all those new language tutorials, and I told you I wanted to learn all of them, all at once?"

"It remains an illogical plan."

"Well, similar exploratory fervency," Nyota says. "She had a lot of questions."

Spock had as well. Never had he truly considered taking Tabitha there, as it is a place he often avoids now that he has the ability to procure and prepare his own food. But perhaps he might have, had he taken into account the possibility of her curiosity.

Again he stirs the pot, the scent from it so familiar that he might be back on Vulcan. A fanciful thought, though, and therefore unreasonable.

"She often does," he says.

"She tried ice cream. I hope that's ok- I didn't know about sugar? It wasn't chocolate, though, so."

He taps the spoon on the rim of the pot and then carefully lays it across the edge. No matter that he waits, her sentence ends there, incomplete and wanting.

"It is no matter." He turns towards Tabitha, still in his desk chair. "Though perhaps a leading contribution to her lack of appetite."

Nyota smiles, her nose wrinkling. "I didn't know you were cooking." She pushes her tongue into her cheek and raises her eyebrows. "Though to be fair, I didn't know you cooked."

"A useful skill."

"Oh, to be sure. Did you put it on your resume?" she asks only to stop, her lips pressed together, whatever light banter in her voice giving way to a stillness about her. "I'm sorry. You don't want to talk about this morning. That's-" She waves her hand, a pass of her palm in front of her. "I'm sorry."

Again, he stirs the _pok tar_. "It is of no consequence." And again he taps the spoon clean. Unnecessary, such repetition. "Our conversation was interesting. And as you said, unconventional." Still, she watches him. More is apparently needed, though specifically what, he is unsure. And nor is he particularly inclined to sift through his memory of the morning, yet with her eyes on him, the alternative choice is silence, and she is here, her shoes off, standing so close beside him. "We discussed our time on the _Lexington_."

"I didn't know you served there," she says.

"For a short while." The labs had been insufficient to house the equipment he required for a number of the experiments he was pursuing, and at the time, transferring back to Earth with his samples had been the logical choice. It is only in retrospect that he realizes that a successfully completed experiment may not outweigh a longer deployment, one opportunity traded for another in an equation of experience that Spock cannot calculate.

Immaterial, now. What is done is done. _Kaiidth_.

"Do you think he does all of his interviews like that?" she asks.

"Unclear." Despite himself, he reaches once more for the spoon. "I do not know who else applied."

"Hammacher," Nyota says, and he pauses in his stirring, the spoon dipped into the pot.

"Pardon?"

"Commander Hammacher. Gaila knows her."

Spock does not, though he could find her personnel file, were Tabitha not occupying his desk. Of course officers already holding the rank of commander would have applied. Many likely with experience serving as first officers, and if not that particular role, then lead scientists, or coordinators of starbases.

"I think some others too," Nyota adds and then grimaces, her mouth pressing thin and her eyes folding at the corner. At her side, she rubs her thumb over her knuckles. "Not that- You probably don't want a run down of other applicants."

"I presumed it would be a competitive posting." Better like that. Starfleet needs expert personnel out on the edge of space, and it is logical to cast a wide net to ensure the correct officers are chosen for such senior positions.

"I'm sure you are a great candidate," she says.

"Perhaps." Though there are others, far better suited to the roll. Which is why he should not have applied, any chance that Pike is seeking out an officer of Spock's ilk so slim as to not be worth the effort of the application and the time of his interview. No, he has likely already made a decision, someone whom Pike knows well, with a resume that does not only boast scientific accomplishments but the types of experiences that would truly qualify them for the role. Illogical, to think that Spock might have been suitable.

"What did he say when you two were done?"

"Goodbye," Spock says, though this should be obvious. He wraps the spoon against the side of the pot. "And that he would be in touch."

He wonders if he will ever be used to the idioms he wades through every day, if it will ever be commonplace to translate them and not have to pause each time and unravel their meaning. Once he had thought it would perhaps become ordinary, but as his days on Earth ticked by, that never proved to be the case. They still snag in his mind, harsh points of words that grate on him.

"That's great," Nyota says, and at his silence she clarifies, "He probably meant that, that he'll call soon."

Her hip against the edge of his counter, she gives him another smile. "And anyway, I know all about tough postings. I happen to have out competed the entire student population of the Xenoling department to get to be your assistant."

Hardly. Her resume had boasted skills he had found on no others, the type of which set her so far apart from other students as to render the exercise of interviewing her nearly unnecessary. He can so easily call to mind the first time he read through her many accomplishments, unsure of when she had found time to achieve them all, how she could possibly possess so much expertise for someone so early in their career, only to find the answer clearly furnished in her dedication to her work, the spark of intelligence that colored every interaction they had.

That they still have. Just somehow now in his apartment, a fact that once again surprises him no matter how readily he should have grasped it by now.

"I believe," he says and gives the spoon another tap, shaking loose a drop of liquid that falls back into the pot. "That rather, I had the fortune of acquiring an excellent assistant above the other officers who were vying for such."

She laughs. "Not really, though."

"There was quite a number of professors who sought you out." Truly it was advantageous Nyota had wanted to work with him. "There still are."

"Well," she says and tucks her hair back. "It wouldn't have been the same semester with any of them."

Carefully, he replaces the spoon in its spot on top of the pot. "No, it would not."

Not at all, though not just in the practical, literal sense that her words denote. He could voice this. Should, maybe, just to soothe that itch that sits under his skin whenever she is near and often when she is not, the fact of her a constant presence written across his thoughts. But his mother's voice rises from the other room and then Tabitha's in its wake, and he does not tell Nyota this, these moments where he could act and fails to repeated so often that he is certain he should be accustomed to them by now.

"I think you did great today," she says as if she could possibly know. "You always do."

To shake his head is needless when instead he could speak, but he does so all the same. Kind of her, truly, to be so continually positive, though perhaps in this he would rather be spared. But humans chalk so much up to a blind sort of hope, a refusal to see what is obvious, to ignore the facts laid bare in front of them. Perhaps were he human, more than the mere half of his genes he has long lived with, but truly as human as Nyota is, he would say the same, but then likely they would not be standing an arm's length from each other in the relative privacy of his kitchen, the silence stretching yet again.

No, that gap between them would have been one he would know what to do with.

A pipe dream. That is what his mother called it, an illusion that hangs on the horizon like the oil slick of a mirage on desert sand, the grasping of straws, what might be but is not.

As if bidden by the moment he has with Nyota, the promise of more of it, Tabitha arrives in the quiet that hangs, the pot bubbling and Nyota's eyes alighting on a jar of spices, a canister of tea, a set of knives, one pulled out and set on the counter.

"Mother says that it will be raining in Seattle," Tabitha says.

"It is always raining in Seattle," he says. A needless exaggeration but he does not correct himself. "Are you hungry yet?"

"No," Tabitha says, but still she sits at the table, small in the larger chair. Her thoughts are turned to their home, a fact he does not need the arc between their minds to discern, but the fall of her shoulders, how her feet swing just above the floor.

He knows that Nyota's eyes rest on him, and the question forms in his mind. He turns it over, examines it, and pauses for too long.

But today he is too tired for prevarication, especially with himself. "Are you?"

"Oh. Yes." Nyota touches her earring, once, gently, before her hand falls back to her side. "If you're eating now."

He nods. He is. Though he hardly is inclined to, a hard knot in his stomach that settled there when he first saw Pike that morning, when he first saw the job posting, when he first realized it impossible to get the thought of the position from his mind. Still, this at least is familiar between him and Nyota, the rhythm of a meal that they have so often shared, no push into un-tread territory to navigate, no leap that he could take and does not.

When she goes to leave, it is later than he might have anticipated. Tabitha has long since folded herself into the side of the couch, the blue light of her padd cast over her face, and Nyota has helped him to clean every dish dinner required.

"I had fun with you today," Nyota tells Tabitha.

Tabitha sits up straighter, a slight uncurl of her back where she was bowed over her padd. "I will give these to Spock."

"I know you will." Still, Nyota does not walk back towards the doorway, instead her head tipping towards his desk. "Is that the other picture you drew? I can see how it would look nice with the one from Spock's office next to it."

"As intended."

"They're really good," Nyota says and Tabitha bends once more over her padd, her eyes tracking across the words.

There is no need to accompany Nyota to the entryway, as she slips her shoes on, nor linger as she fastens her jacket, but he does so regardless, though surely he takes up too much room there, hovering even as he tells himself not to. Still, he does not take a step backwards despite how certain he is that he has nothing to say to her, any continuation of their conversation crowded out of his mind in the imminence of her departure. A brief glance at Tabitha does not help to determine if she has perceived the sudden blankness of his thoughts. She remains apparently absorbed in her reading, and he does not push further lest he distract her. Instead he takes in Nyota before him, still pulling her hair from under her collar, and how she carefully straightens her coat, long fingers smoothing the fabric down.

"Duds?" he asks.

"Seventeenth century. From the Middle English _dudde_." Nyota's shoulders lift towards her ears. The smile that she offers him is small and quick. "You did look nice."

His mouth opens, but no words come. He is certain he looked as he always does, simply in a different uniform, one she has seen on other officers, if not himself.

Her eyes on him, she stands there. Obviously a reply is warranted, and yet he does not have one to offer, for try as he might, he cannot pull on anything else to say than to bid her a good evening and even this he does not manage.

Except that as she watches him, he knows that, as with all else, this is entirely inadequate.

As always, his frustration with himself in situations like this is both limitless and illogical.

But perhaps someday a moment such as this will occur again, the quiet between them, how she waits with him in the shared stillness, and Tabitha will not be there to compound his inaction. When it comes, he can only hope that he will know what to do and will then do it, even now, as the urge rises in him to touch just there, the fall of her hair over her shoulder, to shuffle his feet forward to take the step that might close the space between them. As the seconds slip past, his continued inaction becomes paralyzing, for the wanting alone is not enough, the imagined scenario not sufficient to compel him, only to raise a rush of apprehension that swells in him, as it ever does.

It is for the best. Hardly can he even press himself to begin.

"Well," she says and tugs at the front of her jacket again. "Goodnight."

He watches the door slide shut.

How simple it must be, to take action, to be able to draw upon the confidence others have in such spades. And how enjoyable, to know that whatever he might extend would be welcome, to not sit with a churning boil of trepidation at the very thought.

Later, when he shuts off the lights, the blue glow of Tabitha's padd persists. He sets his comm on his bedside table. Could he, he would will it to ring. Nyota's voice as an invitation for an aimless, wandering conversation, or Pike's with favorable news. So easy, would they take the step that he finds himself incapable of.

Instead, he knows that his mother will be the next to call, heralding their imminent arrival, and he will coax Tabitha towards the door, their parents waiting and days interminably long stretched out ahead of him.


	7. Chapter 7

By the time the shuttle arrives, the filmplast in Tabitha's hands is creased. "You will return this to Nyota," she says, hardly a question.

"I said that I would."

"You are certain. And the padds."

"The padds as well." A reason to seek her out, as Nyota herself had said. It hardly assuages his imminent departure from the city, though he is not certain what will.

What would it have been to have moved towards her last night. Now, in the bright of day, he can easily picture having done so, how it might have played out between them, an unfurling of what for so long has been held so tight. Except that he did not and now nothing has changed, no shift in what exists between them. No, it is the same as ever, an opportunity that slipped past him yet again.

He feels his jaw tighten, despite himself. The thought of last night is unhelpful.

Truly the entire track of his thoughts is unnecessary and needless. He will see Nyota when he returns, when the semester begins, and when he next happens upon her, and for now he is faced with another wait in a terminal, Tabitha shifting from foot to foot, her eyes on the arrivals monitor. The manner of his next meeting with Nyota is of no immediate concern, and the frustration the thought of it stirs in him is not only unwarranted but ineffectual in its failure to resolve anything. Only time will tell; an absurd idiom, and yet applicable. Until then, he has nothing to do but wait.

The arrival of the shuttle is heralded by the typical announcement, as well as Tabitha's step forward. The pinprick flare of his familial bond flickers bright, a reawakening that precedes the physical arrival of his parents. The excitement it stirs in Tabitha is not, strictly speaking, contagious, but it does vibrate in his own mind, bright and bold, assailing against his own thoughts.

"Tabitha," their mother says in greeting, a hand outstretched to her. Over Tabitha's head, Amanda's eyes are warm when they meet his own. "Hello, Spock."

Sarek says nothing. He is drawn up tight and pale.

Spock turns away on the pretense of picking up his mother's bag. "The car is this way."

"Spock cannot be interviewed for Nyota's project, he knows too much about the theoretical frameworks to be unbiased," Tabitha says as she buckles her safety belt. Beside her, Amanda is smiling at her, the consent form already held in her lap as Tabitha continues, unprompted. "And she had no other bilingual Standard Vulcan speakers." Her forehead creases. "Bilingual since birth. There are a number of xenolinguistic students who she says are fluent in Vulcan, but it is not the same."

Around him, the car hums to life. "Simultaneous bilingualism is the term," Spock clarifies.

Tabitha frowns. "I know that."

Next to him, it takes his father longer than is typical to engage the latch on his safety belt.

"What else did you two do?" Amanda asks, her hand smoothing over Tabitha's hair.

"We went to the beach, and I went to the mess hall and we saw jellyfish- which are not fish. They are Cnidaria."

"You two went to the beach?" Amanda asks and does not mask the note of surprise in her voice. Even Sarek's eyes shift towards Spock, though he is occupied, easing the car out of the parking space.

"Gaila and I created a fortification."

Amanda laughs. "At the beach? A sandcastle?"

"Spock was not helpful."

"And who is this Gaila?"

"She's in Engineering."

"An Engineering student," Spock corrects.

"Oh," his mother says, and he does not have to turn to hear the smile in her voice. "A student, is she."

"Nyota's roommate," Tabitha adds, unbidden. "Her side of their room is rather untidy, but Gaila said that it's illogical to put away clothes, if you are simply going to wear them again soon."

This time, Spock does turn. "You went to their room?"

"Her logic is incorrect," Sarek says, and Spock faces forward again, his eyes on the road. No need to partake in this discussion, not with so well worn a subject. His father has always weighed in on matters of logic.

"Nyota had to get her padd, for my interview." In the mirror, Spock can see her turn towards their mother. "She said that analyzing the data will be quite interesting."

Amanda is still smiling. "Did she, now."

Spock spent four years living in the dorms, a time that stretched impossibly long, so it does not follow that he should be overly captivated by the thought of the room that Nyota occupies. Needless to think of it, despite the prick of curiosity that rises in him, this fact of Tabitha's day that has gone unmentioned until now. Never has he considered where Nyota might live or what her room might be like, and now the scant description provided spins itself into a web of other visions. Which is unhelpful, as he has no need to dwell on which side of the room might be hers, or what possessions she might have there, against which wall her desk is pushed to, or what might sit on it.

Ahead of him, traffic slows before accelerating once again, and he neither thinks of Nyota in her room, the edges of the picture not quite filled in, nor the last time he drove out of the city, her in the seat beside him with her long legs crossed, her hands finding and adjusting the hem of her skirt.

Then, he had turned south, the ocean to their right as they drove, the coasts' sunshine awaiting them. Not so today.

"How has work been?" his mother asks, and he blinks, trying to judge the degree to which she might have discerned his thoughts. He has grown lax in the years he has spent away from his family, the shields he once so carefully erected to maintain privacy long eroded. The distance to Vulcan is too great, and his attention has for so long been turned from his parents and sister to the business of his days that he hardly pushed to overcome it. Or perhaps the connection began to slip away well before that, and he only remembers the brightness of the bond when he was a child in some fallibility of memory, back when Sybok's thoughts rested close to his own, and the spark that is Tabitha had yet to ever be struck.

"Acceptable," he says.

"Did your classes wrap up well?"

"They did."

"And next semester? Anything interesting coming up?"

He blinks. In front of him, the road stretches, interminable. He has done this drive before, and the fact of its length should not continue to be a surprise to him.

"I am reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru."

"Didn't you just do that?"

"One of the command track cadets is insistent upon repeating it." Nyota had been present for Kirk's first attempt, though if she will be there for his second, Spock is not certain. Her disinterest in repeating it - told to him vehemently in his office later that day, though he had been gratified that the reasoning was mostly Cadet Kirk's attitude and not the test itself - will be weighed against her personal connection to Kirk, and Spock cannot calculate that outcome. Gaila's relationship to them both, Nyota's history with Kirk, and the web of intricate and tangled associations humans make with each other are compounding factors, ones that Spock does not fully grasp, no matter how Nyota had spelled it out for him. Though perhaps she will mention it to him if she does intend to retake it. He could ask. Should ask, perhaps.

"Nyota says that Spock will be on the _Enterprise_ ," Tabitha says.

"She said what?" he asks before he can consider posing the question, the words coming quickly enough that Sarek turns towards him.

Spock studies the road.

"The _Enterprise_?" their mother repeats, and he does not have to look in the mirror to know that she is now watching him far more closely than before. "That new ship they're building?"

"She was-" Spock clears his throat. "Nyota was being facetious."

"She was not." Tabitha's ire rises swiftly, and she does not tamp it back down, so it shifts at Spock's mind, hot and twisting. He does not allow his hands to tighten on the car's controls. "And you were not there, so you cannot know."

"That does not change the-"

"-Spock." This, firm and gentle. His mother has always had that balance, eking information out of him despite his best intentions. "Did you apply for a position?" When he does not speak, there is a slight nudge against his mind. "Spock?"

"The answer to that should be obvious," he says, only to garner a second look from his father. He forces his expression smooth. "Yes. I did."

"Which one?" she asks, and in the ensuing silence says, "That's quite a bit ahead of its launch, isn't it, to be hiring so early."

He shifts his grip on the car's controls. "Yes."

"Nyota was not employing comedy. I would know," Tabitha says, and though Spock does not voice his response, he is certain from the disapproval that grates against his mind from his father that his doubt of this fact is clearly perceived.

Around them, the roadside rushes past as Seattle draws nearer. He does not need to look to know that Tabitha is peering through the window for a sight of the mountains.

"Father, while we are on Earth, will you take me to see snow?" she asks.

Sarek turns, though not quite far enough to meet Tabitha's gaze. His movements are too stiff for that, abbreviated and shortened at each turn. Spock can see her in the rearview mirror, her eyes wide. "I am fatigued, Tabitha. I cannot."

"We'll have fun anyway," Mother says, her voice as soft as it always is when she speaks to Tabitha. Spock has heard that promise before and borne witness to its aftermath, a platitude that holds no weight considering their destination, though Tabitha nods, appeased.

It is Sarek who responds. "We will?"

It is a peculiar thing to feel the thought of another without it being spoken aloud. How used to it, Spock once was. How commonplace it had been in his mind, his own thoughts held alongside that of his family's. The gentle push of his father's amusement mixes with his mother's exasperation. Spock has been privy to this before, that verge of emotion that Sarek will allow himself to stray near to for Amanda. That control comes so easily to him, as he reels it back. It did for Sybok too, once.

Amanda leans forward from the backseat to swat gently at his arm. "That's my mother."

"I am simply raising the logical point that she is not overly inclined to such jocularity," Sarek says.

"It will be nice," Amanda says, and Spock is certain he is not the only one aware of how she does not disagree. "All of us together."

Whether it is a declaration of intent or a simple wish, Spock does not know, though he has long since learned that his mother's determination is what truly matters.

He is certain that the conversation has lapsed, Tabitha still pressed to the window and his father's mind now quiet when Amanda speaks again. "We don't get many chances anymore."

They never did. And truly, they have never been all together, Sybok gone before Tabitha was born. A particularity that his mother is hardly inclined to voice. Though she was never particularly close to Sybok. He was always an outlier in their family, with another home and his own mother, half gone from Spock's life before he even left.

It is no matter, and hardly will he correct his mother. It is accurate that even the four of them are hardly in the same place at once. The three of them, yes, but Spock is on Earth, and these times are rare enough, strikingly so. Really, they only arise due to Amanda's insistence, her planning and resolution bringing them about, her prompting Spock to come home, how she schedules a visit to Earth around Sarek's work schedule and Tabitha's school, even infrequent as that is. And now this, a trip to Seattle to visit her mother, a few days that he knows his mother looks forward to, even as trepidation arises in her the closer they draw to Seattle. Each time it is swiftly pushed away, not because of her refusal to grapple with her emotions, but an illogical detail of that specific one. Still, none of them call attention to it, and when she again reaches for Sarek's arm, his hand covers hers.

It is rare, this. It always is and likely always will be, this speeding north with his family in the car with him, a handful of days together stretched ahead of them.

…

Strictly speaking he did not forget about the cat, but of all that he remembers of his grandmother's house, the animal hardly rises to the forefront of recollection. He does not allow distaste to cross his features as it rubs across his bag, though when it approaches his ankles, he takes a step backwards.

"Spock," his grandmother says and beckons, and he is caught between the approaching feline and the motion of her hands that is intended to spur him forward. As it is, the cat achieves its goal of winding across the side of his boot as his grandmother places the kiss on his cheek that her hands pull him down to receive. Long ago he learned it was improper to wipe away the remnant of the touch, though it does not follow that he still does not wish to.

"So good to see you," she says. "It's been so long, and you're just down the road."

This, to the rest of his family and a familiar and uncomfortable smile crosses his mother's face. "It's not that far to Vulcan either, Mom."

His grandmother does not respond. Instead, she takes Tabitha's face in both hands, even as Amanda casts a look at Sarek. He touches her elbow.

"You're so big!" Grandmother says.

Tabitha blinks, her eyes wide.

"Margaret," Sarek says, his hand on Tabitha's shoulder, drawing her away. When she was younger, Tabitha might have leaned into him or even stepped beside him. As it is, she stays under his touch, his hand resting on her coat. "Hello."

Upstairs, Spock realizes that not only did he fail to anticipate the cat, but so too did he disregard the customary sleeping arrangements. Of course, the days leading up to this visit were hardly ordinary, a fact that he allows himself to accept as the reason that he overlooked the twin bed that awaits him, Tabitha's matching one against the other wall. There is always the couch downstairs, though at least this room has a door, one that the cat attempts - and fails - to breach.

Once he slept in this room alone, curled under the thin blanket. His grandmother had sent him up here after dinner, and he had stared at the ceiling, unsure of why he was supposed to lay in the dark for so long. Only later had he learned that it was an appropriate hour for human children to sleep, though that had not assuaged him in the moment, the books he had on his padd quickly read through, and chess against the computer hardly a substitute for the hours he would spend with his mother in the evenings, the long walks through the gathering Vulcan dusk. Often they would take a route that would bring them near to Sybok's house, the lights there glowing in the windows as the sky lit up red and then purple and then blue. Sometimes a hand would be raised in greeting. Other nights the family would still be at dinner, and he and his mother would walk past, red dust under their shoes and his mother's voice quiet and steady as their walk wound on.

He sits on the edge of his bed and watches as Tabitha sorts through her bag. She had packed it that morning in alternative bursts of energy and distraction, twice walking to the window above his desk to peer out at the city. Carefully she spreads her belongings on her bed before pushing clothes aside to take out her padds.

"It would be more pleasant were we at home," Tabitha says, holding them in her hands. A statement of fact that dallies close to being a wish. That would be illogical, and so Spock does not think of their home carved of rusty red rocks or the hot wind that blows through the windows. Tabitha sits as well and balances the padds on her thighs, her toes only barely brushing the floor. "Do you think Nyota had a cat?"

"I do not know."

"It is tenacious," Tabitha says to the rattle at the doorway, a paw stuck in the space between the door and the floor.

"Stubborn," he offers.

Were Nyota here, she would have a word of her own to add. Obstinate. Pertinacious. Obdurate.

Hardly can he predict what she might have chosen.

The weekend, and then he will be back in the city again. He could ask her then, perhaps. If he sees her.

"When will it desist?" Tabitha asks, drawing her feet up under her.

Spock simply tips his head to the side, which is hardly an answer, but he does not have one to give.

Dinner does not come soon enough, and the afternoon stretches interminable. The house, for its quiet, is hardly peaceful, the exhaustion of his father dragging uncomfortable against Spock's own thoughts, and the knife-edge of tension from his mother acting in a counterbalance that is strung too tight.

That Tabitha only puts aside her reading to pull out her pens and a new piece of paper is hardly helpful in the attention it draws from their grandmother. "Don't you want to spend time with us?" she asks, a question posed so frequently that Spock is certain that by now she must know the answer.

"She is currently with us," he points out, though this is apparently hardly appeasing, despite how Tabitha sits at the table only half a room away from where he has taken up residence in an arm chair.

Near his feet the cat circles, but it does not approach closer.

"What are you drawing these days?" Margaret asks her. "Is that a gorilla?"

"No."

"A _sehlat_?" Margaret asks, the emphasis on the incorrect syllable.

"It is not."

"A panther?"

Spock sets his padd in his lap. "If she wished to tell you, she would."

"I'm only curious." Margaret lays her hand on top of Tabitha's head. Spock knows well how heavy that touch is.

"You know what I brought you two?" Amanda asks from the doorway. Unclear whether she heard Spock's statement, though no rebuke comes, no small shake of her head aimed at Spock. He curls his fingers over the edge of his padd. From behind her back, Amanda produces a chess board. He can all too clearly imagine her slipping it into her bag and then unpacking it here, a small piece of home brought with her.

Carefully, Tabitha erects it, one level and then the next. The table their grandmother has is too tall for Tabitha, and the light ill-suited for the game, and she has to stretch to finish the assembly, her balance precious as she props a hand on the table and stands on her toes.

"That piece sits on the top," Spock says as Tabitha reaches for an arched, curved strut. It is light, as all the pieces are, small, intricate works of engineering designed to carefully fit together.

"I am aware," she says.

"If you are aware, then you would not have put it-"

"-Chess?" their grandmother asks. As if she has just realized Tabitha's intention. As if the board their mother produced was not indicative enough of their aim. "You have all of Earth to explore, you can't sit in here and play that."

Outside, rain streaks the window. Spock lays down his padd. In two movements, he finishes the assembly. The reproach in Tabitha's eyes fades when he offers her a choice of color, though it does not similarly dissipate in his grandmother's expression. How enjoyable would it be, to not recognize it. But it is an expression too familiar to play at that. He turns to where she lingers in the doorway. "You are welcome to join us."

Her lips press thin as she leaves.

When he is certain she is back in the kitchen, he turns to Tabitha. "You may have even beaten her."

"I can beat you," Tabitha says.

"You cannot."

"I will."

When she was young, Spock would wile away hours with her in a similar manner, though then she could hardly reach the top level of the chess set. That was when their parents would leave them alone together and Tabitha would follow him through the house in his search for silence, a quiet always broken by her steps behind him. He was newly returned to Vulcan in those days, home on vacation that was intended to be a break from his work, though he so often brought it with him. He would spend days in his room pouring over his padds for the coming semester, already studying the material he would soon be lectured on. Tabitha was an ubiquitous presence, silhouetted in his doorway, insistently standing there until he acknowledged her. Then, as now, defeat in chess was hardly a deterrent, her feet a fast patter to go retrieve the board and pieces.

"If you move your rook there, the game will end three turns," he says, and she pauses before removing her hand, her finger pressed to the top.

"The purpose of the game is to refine strategic thought, not competition," Sarek says. Tabitha looks to him, where he stands in the doorway. Spock does not.

"If that is truly the case," Spock says, "I cannot help but presume another activity would have become popular in its stead, perhaps one without a clear winner."

Still Tabitha does not remove her finger, though now her eyes are traveling between the piece and their father. Spock can hear Sarek approach, the carpet of his grandmother's house muffling his footsteps in a way that would not occur on the smooth stone floor of their own home.

"Place it here," Sarek says, his finger indicating an empty square.

An excellent move.

"We are quite capable of playing without your input," Spock says.

"I am simply attempting to help," Sarek says, and Spock looks up at him when he does not remove his finger. Were he to rise, they would be of a similar height. Once, he did not stand eye to eye with his father but those days are long past.

"Please, then," Spock says, his hand extended towards the board.

"Spock."

"Grandmother often requires assistance with dinner."

"Stay." His father says it softly, and though Spock can feel Sarek's mind reach for his own, he does not return that push. "Your mother can help her."

Between them, Tabitha watches, her eyes moving rapidly.

"Additional assistance is often warranted," Spock says.

"I will, then."

Sarek will not. Already Spock can discern his desire to sit.

But Sarek turns towards the kitchen, his robes a long sweep across the floor, and is gone before Spock can speak further.

Typical. An argument ended before capitulation can be made.

But his familiar anger is overlaid with too much fatigue to be felt in its full force. All the better, truly, for it is easier to set aside. He shifts his eyes to the board and not on how Tabitha watches him, her finger still pressed to her rook and her mind searching at his for answers he does not give.

"Do you require help with your next move?" Spock asks, and Tabitha immediately, as predicted, frowns.

"No."

"You are certain?"

"Yes."

"Do not move your rook there."

"I will move it where I wish to," she says, and in the end it is not her rook that she moves but a bishop that Spock captures on his next turn.

Dinner is replicated pasta. They sit down to it without comment, the bowl of sauce covered noodles silently passed around. At home, they would have plated their meals in the kitchen. They are together at least, a thought that springs to his mind, though it might well have originated from his mother.

"What is the Kobayashi Maru?" Sarek asks, as he slowly spins spaghetti around his fork. How muted his movements are. Spock looks away.

He has told his mother of the test, though apparently not everything is transferrable, or even communicated. "A command simulation."

"Spock designed it," Amanda tells his grandmother. "Did the programming and all."

"It's quite a name," his grandmother says.

"I did not design the original examination, I simply updated it," he says. It had been offered when he was a cadet, though he had hardly been interested in it at the time, the allure of the sciences enough to keep him in the labs. Now that seems an oversight, an omission on his resume that he should not have overlooked with such a blasé attitude.

"What is the purpose?" Sarek asks.

"To distill command decisions down to its component parts," Spock answers. Sarek continues to watch him. Spock waits for a comment to come, but the silence is apparently in invitation of further explanation, so he adds, "It is given as an assessment and provides us a way to evaluate command track cadets on their areas of aptitude."

This he likely did not sufficiently impress upon Captain Pike. He had intended to, and yet the conversation had never turned there, and Spock had been unsure of how to steer it. He is not certain that its inclusion on his resume is sufficient explication of his role in the simulation, though perhaps the Captain's disinterest in the matter is indicative of its relative unimportance.

Or perhaps he already knew.

This thought, unbidden as it is, is not entirely helpful. Surely the Captain would have said something to that effect. That he simply wanted to talk of banalities, as if it were simply a social call, his only goal to learn more about Spock and not his work, was… disappointing.

Spock pushes the feeling aside. Dismisses it. Regulates it to the background of his own mind, unwanted. On his plate, he pokes his fork at a limp piece of broccoli, and when his grandmother asks Tabitha a question about school, he is disinclined to care that the discussion so alters its course.

His attention to Tabitha's response is colored by a resignation that rises in him, deep set and heavy. Sarek's eyes meet his, but Spock looks away, down at his plate and the business of consuming his dinner. For the time he spends on a test without an avenue for success, Spock has long been accustomed to the idea of accepting an unhoped for outcome. In his case, it likely is a posting as a junior scientist on the _Enterprise_ , a position not entrusted with designing experiments but carrying them out. Still, he would be on the front edge of space exploration and perhaps there would be opportunity for advancement. And Captain Pike was correct that Nyota is interested in the ship. Given her record and perseverance, in all likelihood she will be assigned to it, if it is still her desire in a year. He would be gratified with her companionship in whatever form it might take, and if their association does not blossom into the depth he might wish for, he will understand. Does understand, as her friendship is more than enough of a gift.

When he has finished cleaning the kitchen, he searches through his grandmother's cupboards. The tins of tea he finds smell of dust when he opens them, but he selects one all the same. Color hardly blooms in the hot water he pours over the bag, old fashioned from a kettle. The living room does not offer a refuge, but he retreats there regardless, his padd a suitable distraction, though he barely gets a paragraph into the article he was ostensibly reading when his mother comes to the doorway. Upstairs, Tabitha is ostensibly sleeping, though her mind is quite clearly abuzz with her own reading, and Sarek and Margaret have long retreated to their own rooms.

"Tea?" she asks, as if she does not have two mugs, apparently impervious to the waning of the night, the hour late enough now that were Spock in San Francisco, campus would be hushed and still.

"I have already made some," he says, but his mother takes the chamomile from his hands and presses instead a mug of _theris-masu_ into his palm. The scent is heady. Comforting. He allows himself to inhale, just once.

"Tell me of your cadet," his mother says, a slight weight on the couch next to him. How often she sat with him like this when he was a boy, her hand resting on his arm and her eyes on him, as she listened to all that he had to say.

He lowers his mug without sipping from it. "Mother."

"She's very pretty."

"Please."

"Tabitha thinks the world of her."

"An inane expression," he says. He can hear how short his words are, a fact repeated back to him in the tenor of his mother's mind. At the purse of her lips, he attempts a different track. "And she has a name."

"Which I would love to hear from you."

"It is-" He shakes his head. "Please do not make assumptions."

"Assumptions?" she asks. Her smile is so kind. Spock ducks his face into his tea. "I would do no such thing."

"It is not like that. How you are thinking. Between us." For her mind is clear. Far clearer than Spock's has ever been on the matter. But of course his mother allows herself those flights of hope. Of course she embraces such, is happy to let them spin out as they will, secure in her ability to weather any disappointment that might lie at the end of them.

"Do you want it to be?" He does not answer, though surely she knows, surely she did not even need to ask. Over her mug, his mother watches him. "Tabitha said that you had an interview yesterday. That was what you were doing while she was with your friends."

Friends. Such a presumption, and so like his mother to make it.

"I find myself surprised she did not only speak of her own," he says. Amanda raises her eyebrows. Never has she tolerated such sharpness from him. He lowers his mug to his lap. "Yes, I did."

"That's quite different from simply being interested in a position, or applying for it." This is a prompt for him to say more, though he does not rise to it, only sips from his tea. She continues, undeterred, "An interview is quite a serious statement of intent."

"There is nothing to say of it that is of note."

"It sounds like it took quite a while."

"Tabitha was well supervised."

"That's not what I meant." As Spock well knows, this second part unspoken but clear all the same.

"It was fine," he says, gentling his tone, though his response only causes her head to tip to the side. "The Captain and I had a lengthy conversation, and he intimated that he would be in contact."

"Captain," she repeats. "I didn't know a captain would be personally in charge of hiring."

They are not. Except for the senior staff. Of which a First Officer and Chief Scientist is the fulcrum. He takes a sip of tea. "Captain Pike was on the _Lexington_ when I was."

"And you enjoyed serving with him?"

"We did not work together directly."

"You yourself said the staff was hardly large." It was not, a far smaller ship than the _Enterprise_ will be. Spock had seen the same faces in the corridors each day, and despite the relative brevity of his deployment, had been sure that he had come to know more of his shipmates and the sundry details of their lifes than he ever cared to. Everyone knew everything, every mark of a person's character, every accomplishment and failure bandied about the halls. How glad he had been to leave. "Mother, despite Tabitha's inference, any posting is hardly a foregone conclusion."

"You know that she does not like to be corrected like that." Nor do you, Amanda does not say. He watches the steam curl up from his tea. "Though I can't help but think that maybe she has a point."

"It is illogical to suppose that-"

"-Spock." Again an interruption, so gentle that it might as well be her hand on his, rather than a rebuke. And then her fingers are resting on his sleeve, just at his wrist, her touch light. "I happen to know that when you set your mind to something, hell or high water won't hold you back."

Perhaps that once was true. He stares out across the room. The cat has been there recently, hair clinging to the base of a chair that was previously clean. "The common usage of idioms does not render them logical."

To this, Amanda's only response is a raised eyebrow. An apology sits in his mind, though he does not voice it. Instead, he watches the steam curl up from his tea.

"Spock, you don't have to be nervous about the ship." He shakes his head, but his mother ignores him, her hand tightening.

"The probability of being offered the position is less than-"

"-With that attitude, certainly." She straightens his sleeve, her touch gentle and soft. "My sweet boy, you as ever, are capable of doing whatever you wish to do. You're the only one who somehow fails to see that."

That night, the raucous calls of bugs seems unending outside his window, no silence accompanying the encroaching night. It was one of the first aspects of his deployment that he had noticed, sounds of San Francisco traded for the hum of engines and the whistle of the computer. Beyond that, the ship was silent and never more so than when he was alone in his quarters. Of course, by then the sounds of a Terran city had been commonplace, enough years spent on Earth that the screams of _la matayas_ were no more than a memory. He had enjoyed the quiet on board the _Lexington_ , and on Earth he sought out the same, his quarters and office a respite from the blare of car horns, the incessant chatter of his colleagues. Nyota had always respected that silence without him ever drawing her attention to it, yet another detail that she seemed to simply absorb. Now, if he could be back in his own rooms on campus he would, what with their accompanying calm, for here the noise presses in on him, too much and too loud.

He sets his padd down again, when he reads the sentence before him for a third time. The door, old fashioned and on hinges rather than pneumatics, shakes in its frame before revealing itself to have a faulty catch. Around the edge of it comes not only a slice of light, but two ears as well. In the next bed, Tabitha is asleep, so he alone watches the cat's approach, how it sniffs near to where Tabitha's hand lays in a loose curl before turning with a lash of its tail.

He nudges at it with his foot when it alights on the end of his bed, and then is forced to use his hands to remove it. He deposits it squarely on the floor and is blinked at in a manner he can only qualify as accusatory.

No pets on a ship. A logical policy, and yet one that left many of his fellow officers bereaved for the duration of their deployment. At the time he had hardly understood the inclination to mourn the absence of an animal, but perhaps had _I-Chaya_ lived for longer, Spock would have been more understanding.

Shaking his head to clear it of thoughts is illogical, and he does not know if the urge to do so arises from the memory of his _sehlat_ or the fact that he should school his musings well away from a deployment of any length. His comm has been stubbornly silent, and while he does not know the standard time between an interview and any response, positive or negative, he cannot help but acknowledge an upswell of foreboding at the dark screen.

He had contacted Nyota directly. Back then, she was Cadet Uhura to him, and he had had no inkling that would ever change, though in retrospect it is easy to view those days through the filter of all that grew between them, even as shaped and stilted by their positions as it was. She had been another resume, one interview among many, and a completed application, the only differentiating factors her performance in his class, her clear enthusiasm, and her skillset that so thoroughly placed her in a league apart. It had been apparent from their conversation, the cover letter she had sent, and the message he had received afterwards, thanking him for his time and reiterating her desire for the position, that she furthermore had a particular tenacity, that resolve of her he so admires. One of her many estimable qualities.

Idly, and then with more purpose, he scrolls through his inbox, past the various missives she sent him over the semester to even older ones, sandwiched between her inquiries as his student and those that started when she began her position. There, in that liminal space between, is a record of her application, the appointment of her interview, and that follow up she had sent him. Were it logical he might retroactively assign some meaning to those messages, but all he can do is look at them for a moment before shutting his padd off, plunging the room into darkness.

He tips his head back against the pillow. The ceiling is a mass of gray and black, lit with none of the lights of the city he has grown so used to. Despite his efforts, want wells up in him. For another message from her. To step backwards into the last weeks of the semester. To be once again in yesterday, the meal she shared with him at his table, one of his forks held in her hand and their conversation purposeless, trifling, and all the better for it. How fast time had moved, untamed in its advance, that relentless progression that had spurred the night along.

Now the craving that builds is further, horribly, compounded by imagined bright white corridors. The promise of uncharted space. The number of laboratories the _Enterprise_ boasts, the strength of the sensors, the reprieve it would grant from life on Earth.

That yearning is hardly Vulcan. He expects better of himself, and yet his attempt to tamp it down ends as it always does, imperfect and ineffectual, giving way to the inevitable and unending frustration he so constantly battles with himself. He has never had success with such, his feelings not easily slid away, regulated to the background, neatly packaged and forgotten. No, they crop up again and again, unbidden and unwelcome. A persistent, unabating reminder of what he does not have and what he should not wish for.

Which, truly, he is entirely tired of, that wanting without the relief of it ever being assuaged.

How exhausting, that constant battle.

He picks his padd up once more. In the glow of its blue light, he reads again what Nyota sent him all those months ago directly after her interview. When he read it originally, he had been in his office, and it was yet another message in his inbox, to be scanned, replied to, and set aside, so that he could continue his day. Now, he thinks of her at her desk, her hands poised above her keypad as she composed it with that attention she has, that care she takes with her work. Tabitha could picture the scene far more clearly, but she is still asleep, curled on her side, her breathing even and slow, and her hand dangling over the edge of the bed.

Again, the cat sniffs her fingers.

"Cease," Spock whispers, but the cat rubs against Tabitha's knuckles, first one cheek and then the other.

He will likely never visit Nyota's room. No matter their association in the coming weeks, the next semesters, and her remaining years at the Academy, the dorms are a place that officers do not go. He is hard pressed to remember when the first through of her space occurred to him, though he knows now that despite how it seems he has always thought of her room and her in it, that can hardly be accurate. No, there must have been a point at which he did not wonder about her like that, where he did not hang on the details of her, collected piece by piece and fit into a picture of her that filled out with growing clarity at each disclosure, each carefully revealed fact.

The timestamp on the message is for 2109. A Tuesday. He had interviewed her the preceding day, and if he had not decided by the conclusion of their meeting, it had certainly been by the time her message arrived in his inbox. It was the next morning he had contacted her, arriving early to his office and beginning the business of the day as it were. Though she could hardly have known of his intention. She would have written this message uncertain and believing that the paragraph she wrote could hold sway. An effort worth the time and attention she gave it, he is certain, for she rarely undertakes any task without such a careful calculation.

Unneeded, in his estimation.

Though it would hardly be the first time his assumption, based on a life started on Vulcan now imperfectly fit to Earth, hardly proved well founded.

Again he scans her message. Then, he reads it again, slower. For a moment, he considers, and then opens a new, blank message. He types quickly, reiterating the points he likely did not sufficiently make to Pike about his desire for the position, and his suitability for it, before he can doubt himself, his words following from Nyota's. His uncertainty rises anyway, and he is unsuccessful in pushing the knot in his stomach aside as he attempts to articulate an argument for why he, above other qualified candidates, is the correct choice for the position, but he does so nonetheless, spelling it out as Nyota did. Though hardly had she needed to leverage such a case for herself. So clearly was she right for the job.

He sends the message before he can decide otherwise, and in the ensuing stillness looks about himself as if something might have changed. But Tabitha still sleeps, her mouth parted and her hand still exposed, and the cat continues to watch him, pacing back and forth.

When it jumps on his bed a second time, he stands, collects his comm and the animal, and closes the door behind him. The cat he leaves downstairs, delaying its return to its mission to disrupt Tabitha, if not interrupting its determination to do so, and steps out into the night, the air damp and cool.

Without considering it further, lest the impulse abandon him altogether, he flicks his comm open.

"Spock?" Nyota asks.

"Hello." Dewdrops cling to his boots, a bright shine in the lights cast from the house and the streetlights beyond. It is late. Though she answered immediately and she does not sound overly tired. "Is now an inopportune time?"

"No, not at all." There is a quiet shuffle in the background, though he cannot identify the source of the noise. "What's going on?"

Around him, the yard is still humming with the buzz of insects. "Nothing of consequence."

"I thought maybe you were calling about something with the grading?" she asks, her voice rising on the question.

For Advanced Morphology. It takes him a moment to place it. "No, I was not."

"Good." A pause and then, softer, "That's good."

"I simply wished to ask after your day." Logical. And true. Accurate to the degree that he should not feel the need to unnecessarily switch his comm to his other hand.

"Oh." Surprise is held in the syllable, more than Spock would prefer to recognize. An oversight, to not anticipate such. "It was good. Hold on a second, ok?" More rustling and then what sounds like a door sliding shut. When she speaks again, the timber of her voice has changed. Softer, perhaps, or she could simply be holding her comm closer. "And yours? How was the drive? And how are your parents?"

"They are well." The sound of insects that live in the night, active now in the late hours of dusk, rise up around him. He considers and then adds, "My mother has very specific opinion on which road is the correct route to take."

"Were you driving?"

"I was." Under his boots, the grass of the yard gives way to the sidewalk. "I have been instructed to ask you whether you have a cat."

"A cat? Now, no, although I'm pretty sure Gaila would be in favor."

"I would expect so," he says, and through his comm comes the soft sound of her laugh.

"We had one when I was younger."

"How young?" he asks. How rare it is to hear these details of her life, how infrequently are they afforded an opportunity to discuss them. And how often their work came between them, stymying the possibility of this.

"Four."

"Truly?"

She laughs again. What a pleasant sound. How utterly, completely enjoyable to hear. "Yes, four. Hayawani- it means monster."

He pauses. Already his clothes feel damp. Unimaginable, this moisture hanging in the air at home, something less than a rain but more than the weight of humidity. He could nearly touch it, he is sure, if he were to try.

"You named your cat 'monster'?" he asks. She has always spurred him on. This is hardly the first time he has given himself over to it, but now it is with a loosening that was not possible in his office, on the steps to the library, on the paths of campus when they were in uniform with another workday to follow. No, this has an odd freedom to it that lets the conversation grow, spiral, expand in a way that surprises him all over again. Logical, to not resist it. To explore along where it might go and follow the turns and wends as he does.

"My father named it that." Again, she laughs. "It was supposed to be Buttons."

"I am not certain if it is an improvement or not."

"Hey, I was a kid."

"Was it deserving of its name?"

"Well, it was cute as a button," she says, and he can picture the smile that accompanies her words. "And it regularly attacked my father's ankles. He would hide under the table, you'd never know he was there."

"Your father or the cat?" he asks and does not dismiss the immediate gratification that rises through him, thick and warm, when she laughs yet once more. He should. He will. But just a moment longer. As his mother would say, it has been a long day. A long week, a long few years. Surely the upswell of delight is not harmful, is hurting no one. "A better hiding place would have been advantageous, if the attacks continued."

"Is Tabitha lobbying for getting a cat? I'd say my father could turn her off of having one real quick, but he ended up letting it sleep on the bed."

"The contrary, actually." This, this is easy between them. It has been for some time. Perhaps if he can regulate their interactions to comm calls and discussions after work, he will have similar success in the future, though that is hardly what he wants. No, not at all, but so much more. Still nearly impossible to conceive of and yet she is laughing, speaking with him, sat with him at his table, spent her days with him, shared so much over the preceding weeks. Surely, it cannot be coincidence. It cannot, possibly, be inconsequential. "Our grandmother's cat is insistent upon interacting with Tabitha, and she is less than amenable."

"Well, cats are pretty persistent. I've always admired that," Nyota says.

The road his grandmother's house is on curves away from where he stands, the sidewalk a slow curl around the edge of the road. It is a long walk to the end of the street, and further still were he to head towards the lights of the city, bright and glowing, lighting up the clouds above.

Just speak, he instructs himself. Surely, this he can manage, to put words to what sits inside of him. To take a step forward, even if he is uncertain of the outcome, for to do otherwise will be to perpetually stall, left wanting and never having.

He adjusts his grip on his comm. "It is pleasant to talk to you."

"Yeah." This, quietly. "I'm glad you called."

He tips his head back, as if he could see the stars. But no, the clouds hang low, laden as they are with a water that coats his face. "If you have any advice on placating felines, it would be greatly appreciated."

"This, I'm an expert in. Not so much with sea creatures, no matter what Gaila maintains. I had unscathed ankles for my entire childhood." She must still be smiling, from the note held in her voice. "How long do you have?"

"All night." Likely a drizzle will start soon, ubiquitous as it is here. What a wet city. What an entirely, completely, odd thing it is, to have so much water fall from the sky. "It is, as you have said, vacation."


	8. Chapter 8

"Good morning," Spock hears and he lowers his mug without drinking from it.

"Father," he says.

In the doorway, Sarek hovers, neither in the kitchen nor the hall behind him. Spock sets his mug on the counter.

"How is your day?" Sarek asks and Spock watches his approach, those even steps across the tile. He adjusts his mug, turning it so that the handle is parallel with the edge of the counter.

It is 0507. "Acceptable," Spock says, as if anything might have occurred since he awoke.

Then, he considers all that passed during what is, technically, today. Factually, so. What quite accurately took place past midnight, the clock ticking over as their conversation continued, rain drenched and quiet, Nyota's voice losing none of its pace even with the turning of the hours.

His picks up his mug once more. Sips from it and blanks his mind as he was once taught, his teacher's fingers pressing to his face, standing over him and waiting for that stillness to come.

Instead, his mind fills with the tenor of Nyota's laugh, huffed softly through the connection of their comms, pealing, bright. He turns towards the window. Drinks from his mug again, too aware of his father opening a cupboard behind him.

"Have you eaten?" Sarek asks.

"I am going running," Spock says. Not an answer, not even barely, and Spock sets his mug down before his father can voice this fact, and walks from the room before the thought can slip from him that exercise was hardly his intention for his morning.

No, reading, rather, or the ostensible pursuit of work. Though he knows he would have spent that time as he did the first sips of his tea, eyes on the backyard and the shifting wet branches, leaves dripping and his mind retracing the night before, a course his thoughts had set themselves upon the moment he folded his comm closed, a fixation that followed him to sleep and the waiting morning, lit through with dawn and full of the lingering notes of their call.

Upstairs, the silence of his room does little to settle his mind, not Tabitha's soft breathing nor the voices that begin to rise up towards him, his mother apparently awake. Here, their conversation is not muffled by rock and stone, not turned indistinct through the layers of the slabs of their house. Instead, their words travel clearly up the stairs and down the hallway, through even the closed door behind which Spock sits. As he laces his shoes, he does not listen. And yet the tone of their discussion reaches him all the same, his mother's laugh and the evenness of his father's words.

Commonplace, once, this sound of them talking. The cadence, the rhythm, the rise and fall of it.

So too was the gentle beat of their minds against his, tumbling and wheeling as it is, his mother's tickle of amusement at his father's words, an answering placidity that belies the fact that, were he there to see, Sarek's hand would be on Amanda's arm, her shoulder, her elbow. Spock had never observed such fleeting touches shared among others on Vulcan, though whether that was due to the privacy that rendered such moments between other couples unknowable or his parent's own unique relationship, Spock was never able to ascertain. Certainly he had never had the same knowledge of other households, though surely their practices could not be comparable, even if he had. So firmly was his family set apart. Is set apart, still. So different and so distinct that even now he remains unable to distinguish individual idiosyncrasies from any norm. Never has he had a benchmark. Just the peculiarities of his own family and any and all understanding that he can glean therein.

He pulls his laces tight. Ties them, stands, and adjusts his shirt.

He slips from the house through the front door, across the squeaking planks of the porch, and down the three short steps to the walkway beyond. Grass grows between the stones, uneven and patchy. In the place of the solitude with which his morning began, a run will have to suffice, pavement worked over by the soles of his shoes, damp, early morning air pulled into his lungs and breathed out again. Rhythmic. Regular and steady. One foot fall and then the next, his focus on the movement of the road beneath him and not the lightness of Nyota's voice, the turns of their conversation, the moments in which he was certain she would bid him goodnight and instead delved into another topic, and then another as their discussion wound on. How aimless, it was. Entirely, delightfully purposeless.

While he does not sweat, his clothes grow moist all the same, clinging to his shoulders and arms when he finally pauses. Long ago he grew accustomed to exercise on Earth, that slight buoyancy of lighter gravity, the tackiness of humidity on his skin, the too-yellow sunlight that glared bright in his eyes. Now, the sun is well hidden behind clouds, and he is glad for it, each blink even against the cloud-white a fight against the pull of his thoughts, borne unbidden by the drag of fatigue. Too few hours of sleep, though he cannot find it in himself to particularly concern himself with such carelessness. There is no reason to, not with the looseness of his schedule, the utter liberty to his day.

He does not yawn, but he believes he can understand the appeal. Instead he begins running again, increasing his pace, one foot and then the next, houses ticking past him and the slow crawl of cars starting down the street, as the day begins around him. A dog barks behind its fence, and another one joins, muffled by the walls of its house.

That it was only hours ago he folded his comm closed seems peculiar in the growing brightness of the morning. Illogical, though, to believe the evening before as somehow unconnected to now, no matter the fall of night, the stillness, the stretch of time when everyone else slept and the city was dark slick and quiet. Really, he did not intend to speak to Nyota for so long. Did not think it was possible, and hardly knew to expect it, that hours could be wiled away like that. Though perhaps he should have known, conversations cut off on the steps of the library, abbreviated in the halls of the Xenolinguistics Building, and abridged in his office, left shortened and condescend from all that they might have. Perhaps even then he could have understood what he tried to make sense of last night, the sidewalk stretched out before him and her voice continuing on, unbroken. Now, the impulse sits in him to dwell in his own perfect recollection, to let every footfall bring back a moment of that call, to let that time with her on his comm play over and over again, as if he is back in it, not facing the gold of the morning light but still beneath the blanket of dark that backdropped their conversation, a quiet and peaceful enclosure.

Enough, he knows. And yet that conviction does little to center his mind, for the thought of her fills him through, accompanying the fall of his feet, the breath he pulls in and lets back out again. He studies the road, the sky, the houses he passes, but the banality of the landscape holds no calm, for the dullness of the scenery cannot drive from his mind the upswell of all that lingers from the night before. Not even the idea of his padd and message inbox can do so, waiting for him, empty. Even that thought cannot temper what grows within him and apparently his stomach is going to flutter this morning despite all intention, turn over on itself with a jumping, leaping expectancy, and will do so with a blurring line of excitement and apprehension that is too indistinct to tease apart.

He runs until the sharp flare of emotion inside him is, if not extinguished, then at least tempered, a low smolder that he is relatively more certain he can keep a firm hold on than when he first blinked awake, his mind threatening to spill outwards in ways not permissible.

And yet in the shower, he finds himself idle and his thoughts threatening to wander once more, no longer contained by the forward motion of exercise, nor even the discomfort of the house's substandard sonics, but are bursting, bright, tumbling forth no matter how he seeks to still them.

Though perhaps it is better here than in the kitchen. Some false sham of privacy of a closed door, the whir of sonics, no matter how the minds of his family press at him.

Again, he searches for a calm, ducking his head forward under the sonics. And yet he is unsurprised when the kneading against his skull does little to still his mind. Instead, it serves simply as an accompaniment to the thoughts that gather there, barely ordered and spinning.

He should not give in to the indulgence of being so delighted. This, at least, he knows. Perfectly so.

And therefore hardly should he allow himself to contemplate a future he can barely withstand the thought of, that surge of hope and its accompanying dizzy, shaky burst. But he is useless at resisting the image of the Academy's campus, of Nyota, of their days there forthcoming and what they might hold, and he finds himself powerless in the wake of such expectations, the type of which buffet at him, repeated visions of the beginning of the new semester and the days stretched just before it starts, of afternoons and evenings and the impossible, inconceivable wish that they might potentially be spent in her company.

All based on one call. Spurious reasoning, in all likelihood. And illogical, to derive such a picture of the future from so little. Even more so to hinge such a reaction upon it, overlay a simple conversation with that rush in his stomach he cannot staunch.

Certainly more should be required. Surely, a conversation cannot portend all that he wishes it could hold.

Were he on Vulcan, such a matter between two unbonded individuals would be a simple declaration of intent and an answer furnished in response. No need for equivocation or debate, but a straightforward agreement between the parties whether to form an association or not, a process Spock always observed to be uncomplicated.

Terran practices are hardly comparable.

Of the acquaintances he has had who have engaged in such, never has he noted anything approaching the unelaborate conventions of his home. No, humans have entire genres of literature and film devoted to the predicaments they find themselves in, and words for it in their language for which there is no suitable equivalent in Vulcan, nor even phrases that can aptly begin to form an approximation for how strange the meanings are.

He tips his head to the side and lets the sonics roll down his neck and then settle at his shoulders. In front of him, the grout of the tile needs cleaning.

He studies this, as if it is sufficient to blanket an unending, rushing rumination of the future. It was one evening's conversation. A single comm call. A lengthy one. And entirely enjoyable. And yet a coherent, concise clarity does it hardly provide, no focusing of the faint, blurry notion of what might be held in the approaching days.

It should have. And surely it did, in the moments after he folded his comm closed, a peacefulness now marred by his own inevitable contemplation over what had just occurred.

For how unique last night was. How utterly, completely exceptional.

As it is not only that there is no one else that he has spoken to at such lengths and in such depth, but that there is no one that he has wished to do so with.

He braces his hand against the tile, bending further forward. Surely she cannot make a habit of such conversations. She is too busy, her time allocated for her work and her extra curricular activities. Certainly, nearly absolutely, it must be as much of an aberration for her as it is for him.

Though, conceivably, it may not be. It is entirely possible, if not necessarily likely, that while his interactions with her are rarities in his own life, the same does not hold true for her.

Or perhaps not all that improbable of an idea at all. She is well liked. And well connected. And clearly intelligent and kind and of her many qualities, he is certain he is not alone in noting them. He could hardly be.

He straightens.

Unrealistic, to presume that which he has noticed is not already well understood by others.

And furthermore, illogical to assume that which they have shared together is not extended to individuals beyond him. It is only conversation. And her time. And she is unerringly, unendingly pleasant. Friendly. Welcoming, in a way he has for so long appreciated.

Surely, he cannot be the only one to find her so approachable.

And it would then follow that it would be unfounded to surmise that with so many others at the Academy, the fact that he has not observed any regularity to the company she keeps beyond her roommate, that such companionship does not exist. And if not at the Academy, then elsewhere. She would not be the first cadet to expand the boundaries of her life beyond that of campus and Starfleet. That he did not as a student does not mean that she would be inclined to act the same.

He swallows. The sonics are nearly bruising. Uneven and irregular as they batter his shoulders.

"Spock."

He blinks at the closed bathroom door, visible beyond the translucent shower wall.

"Spock, I must shower as well," Tabitha calls through it.

He clears his throat. His hand is pressed too firmly to the tile. "Use Mother and Father's."

"No."

"Please."

"No."

"There is no need to-"

"-You have had sufficient time in which-"

"-Stop," he says as he turns the sonics off. He does not raise his hand to his forehead, despite how he is nearly certain it is about to begin to ache.

The sonics, he thinks. An unfortunate side effect.

"What?" Tabitha asks through the door.

"I am finished," he calls back.

At home, he has his own bathroom. And hardly any of these accompanying troubles.

As he dresses, his shirt rubs at the skin over his shoulders. Twice he adjusts the fabric and then resolves to simply ignore the discomfort.

At the bottom of the stairs, the house appears to be entirely still. It is not truly so, what with the whine of sonics above his head and the proximity of his parents he can feel in his mind, but the rooms on the first floor are empty and quiet.

Were that there was a readily available distraction.

In the kitchen, there is evidence of recent use left in streaks of flour and the dried, hardened remnant of dough. It was imperfectly scraped clean, but scarcely would his father have been cooking.

He finds a cloth in the second cabinet he opens, carelessly folded and placed in an uneven stack with its like. For a moment, he considers refolding all of them. And then he selects the one on top and shuts the cabinet door firmly. Unneeded, to concern himself with such. As unnecessary as the directions this thoughts still attempt to take.

He passes the cloth over the counter once, and then again. But before he can finish wiping away the remaining flour, a hand bats at his.

"This was supposed to be a surprise," his mother says as she retrieves a covered bowl from next to the oven. He can feel her mind against his. Open, and curious. How calm she is, when his own thoughts are too full, rubbed raw with the force of them

Gently her hand touches to his shoulder. He nods to the bowl and, as if his mind did not ache, says, "It is not particularly well disguised."

"You two were upstairs." Deftly his mother removes the towel laid over top of the bowl and upends a ball of dough onto the counter in a billow of flour. "I thought you might be working."

He rubs his thumb over a crusted streak of dried flour. "I have been informed that we are supposed to be spending time together," he says.

Lightly, she swats at his sleeve. Her hand leaves flour behind on the black fabric. "You think you're so smart."

Cheerful, her mind is. Jovial, even. Both push at him, a quiet simmer that fills the steps between them. He lets his eyebrow rise. "You yourself have said as much."

She shakes her head. At her mouth, a smile plays. "If I'm not going to surprise you, give me a hand. I'm already tired of replicated food."

Ostensibly, there is no difference. He could tell her this, but she would shake her head at him again. Indeed, their entire conversation plays out in his mind without either of them needing to speak. So familiar, how it washes over him. And so too is how she presses the ball of dough into his hands. Gently, she wipes at his sleeve, though the flour simply spreads under her palm.

He kneads the dough in the manner she once showed him, long ago when he had stood on a stool and even then had struggled to reach the counter. The amount of dough had been too much for his hands and the end result was misshapen, imperfect. No matter how he had tried, it had risen poorly in the oven, a too thin edge burnt and the center uncooked.

Delicious, she had declared it, flour embedded in her nail beds, scattered over the cuffs of her sleeves.

Again he presses his hand into the dough. It is warming in his hands, growing pliable. Upstairs, the whirr of the sonics shuts off. Soon light footsteps will descend the stairs. Spock can already envision Tabitha in the doorway, asking after the day's plans, an idea for entertainment, the options for breakfast.

Cereal, he is certain the answer will be, with the accompanying affront of replicated milk.

He pushes the thought away. In its absence, the quiet sweep of his mother's thoughts once more touch his.

"The posting I applied for is the First Officer position on the _Enterprise_ ," he says quietly, and his mother's knife stops above the pile of walnuts she chops. A poor substitute for _kov-sayas_ , but there are none here on Earth, nor _kaavas_ syrup to toss them in. Instead, a jar of honey already sits with its lid removed. It will suffice, and Spock resolves to not think of how the _kriela_ they form would taste in the kitchen at home, no drizzle of rain dotting the windows there.

He takes a breath, and when he lets it out, flour stirs across the counter. He does not look towards the door behind him.

Once more, he pushes his palm into the dough, flattening it. Already the beginning of a shine is apparent, the beginnings of an elasticity. "For which I am technically qualified, though likely not above officers with more extensive experience."

He is tired of the well worn tracks in his mind that his thoughts immediately turn. Whether the Admiralty will offer any input. The types of careers other applicants have led. What Pike might think of his own background. Predictable, his own fixations. And needless. What he has accomplished since his graduation is immutable. So hardly, then, is it necessary to continue to ruminate over the different shapes his years in Starfleet might have taken, all that he might have done and failed to.

"I didn't know you were interested in another deployment," she says, her knife still suspended.

"Teaching is hardly an attractive position in the long term."

"And here I thought you were enjoying being at the Academy." She smiles. With a drag of her hand, she moves an unchopped pile of walnuts before her. "Some aspects at least."

Spock is certain he cannot play at misunderstanding, for her words are direct. He simply pushes at the dough again, refusing to rise to what she would term 'bait'. Perhaps his mind is even less controlled than he would believe. Or perhaps she was awake last night, or his father was. Tabitha had still been asleep when he had returned, her mouth open and the blankets tugged up to her shoulders, unaware of how he had lingered on the porch, as neither he nor Nyota had bid goodbye in anything approaching an efficient manner.

"The ship is slated for deep space missions," he says. Returning to the topic at hand does nothing to diminish her growing smile, nor the way her thoughts nudge his. Playfully, he believes. Jocular. How simple for her, to hold that so easily in her mind. "When it deploys, it will likely be sent to the edge of the Alpha Quadrants which is-" He pauses. "Appealing."

Her hand leaves another patch of flour on his sleeve. "We'll miss having you so close."

"It is hardly close, Mother."

"A shuttle ride," she says, as she spoons honey over the nuts. "When will the _Enterprise_ be launching?"

"A year." He turns the dough over once more. "Or perhaps slightly more."

"We'll have to visit you again before you go," she says.

"I have not been hired."

"I'm sorry we don't get out here more," she says, as if he had not spoken. "It's- well, there's no real excuse." She tips her head towards the living room where Margaret sits with her book. "As has been made clear to me."

"It is no matter."

"It is," Amanda says lightly but colored through with a firmness that is so typical to her. She slips the dough from his hands and begins to roll it out. She works in silence before she turns to him with what he can only term a grin. "And a year. Well, that's convenient now, isn't it."

"Mother-"

"-Oh, really, Spock, you can't expect me to not be curious." The dough flattens with each pass of her rolling pin. "You know, you could make this easier by just telling me. Rip the bandaid off."

"Mother."

"Otherwise, I'll have to guess, and you might not like what I come up with."

How casually she speaks about it. How comfortable she is, when so much inside of him heaves with only the mere thought.

"Please," he says.

"You talked about this Cadet Uhura all semester."

"You consistently ask about my work."

"You know T'Sai?" she asks. She does not wait for his nod before saying, "Her son is on the _Antares,_ and she asked me who the head of your department is. Funny that I couldn't answer her."

"How would you like the dough divided?" he asks.

"For someone who doesn't want me to make assumptions, you're hardly laying the topic to rest. Make a dozen or so," she says and hands him the knife. It has pieces of walnut scattered over it. He would have rinsed it, and she has not. They will all be mixed together in the end, he is sure she would argue, if he raised the topic. Inefficient and therefore illogical, she would say.

He slices the dough into twelve equal pieces. Twice her arm bumps against his, as she scatters the nuts on top. They stick together with the thickness of the honey, forming small clusters that result in uneven distribution. More than one lands on the cutting board.

"Mother," he says again. "It is-" He shakes his head.

"You know what I think," she says, as she wipes her palms together over the sink. Flour puffs outwards when she claps her hands together once and then twice. "I think she watched Tabitha for an entire day."

He gathers up the fragments of scattered, unneeded walnuts, and then drags the side of his hand across the counter and adds a dusting of flour to the mound.

"Tabitha said she stayed for dinner that night," his mother says. Again, her mind bumps at his. It is not an accident, he knows. That coaxing is long recognized. Routine once. Though the floor beneath them was solid stone and the sun rose hazy through the windows, none of the gray drizzle that this morning brings, a mist hanging over the day that Spock knows already will not burn off, not with the thick layer of cloud the sun lurks behind. "Are you going to see her when you return?"

"Do you require more assistance?"

"Spock." Gently, she touches his arm. "That was very nice of her. To spend so much time with your sister."

The oven is not preheated. Vulcan models would not need such prior preparation, the heating element capable of warming quickly enough to render such a process moot. Not so on Earth, the circuitry used here not so refined. Inefficient, rather, and laborious. Ancient, his father had once called the appliance, years ago when Spock stood eye level with the knobs, and hardly was his father given to exaggeration.

His mother's thumb rubs over his sleeve. He nods.

"And it seems that you two spend quite a bit of time together," she says.

A factual statement, and as such, it needs no response. A companion to rhetorical questions, these Terran norms of conversation that are so purposeless.

How difficult, to attempt to speak of all of this. To presume that anything as commonplace as words might bear the weight of everything that turns in his thoughts. To even begin to put into speech that which he thinks, which he can barely allow himself the full consideration of. Never has he done this.

Though of course it does not follow that past action must predicate the future. Illogical, to believe such. And more so to act as if that belief is fact. One of the first lessons he had in logic, learned in the classroom of his school. It was intended to be a simple exercise, he knows now. He too always begins the semester with easily grasped information, and so had the teachers on Vulcan constructed their own classes. And yet he had been stymied. Unsure. Doubtful and irresolute, the idea so foreign as to be unbelievable. Of course, at the time, most aspects of his school day had carried such uncertainty. It had taken so long for those halls to become familiar, and so soon thereafter for them to change again from that familiarity to a growing, stifling constraint.

How freeing it had been to leave. How utterly unbound he had thought himself, his bag packed and Earth awaiting him.

Carefully he pushes the pile of unneeded walnuts aside. "We spoke last night."

"Oh?"

This should not be so difficult to tell his mother. And yet still, he hesitates to say, "I called her."

"You did, did you."

He sweeps the cutting board clean, tumbling the walnuts into his other palm.

"What is she like?" his mother asks.

"I am certain Tabitha told you."

"What did you two talk about?" She tightens her fingers gently on his arm. "And don't say work."

"We do often discuss our work," he says regardless, and she squeezes his arm again. Outside, rain taps at the window. Still his mother holds his arm. "She is in the Academy Chorale."

"Oh, she sings? How lovely."

It is not exactly a descriptor he would make use of himself. Interesting, perhaps. Though he has found most everything about her to be so.

"Do they perform?" his mother asks.

"Yes."

"Have you been to a concert?"

"I have not."

"Are you planning to go?"

He is not intending to, though only due to the fact that he has not considered it. Though he could. Deliberate attending, that is. And could attend, too. Though such a decision is predicated on so much.

If only the choice were easy and arose straightforwardly, buoyed by future circumstances. Clear. Readily apparent that of course he would be present. That would be preferable, in so many ways.

He folds the cloth again, carefully aligning the corners. This his mother will understand. Will listen to, if he told her. And offer her thoughts, if he asks for them. And perhaps even if he does not. He takes a breath. "When I return to campus, I am not certain how to-"

"-Mother?"

Amanda turns. A smile fills her face. "Sweetie. Good morning."

"Where are my pens?" Tabitha asks from the doorway.

"On the table," Amanda says.

"They are not there."

"Did you look?"

"Yes."

"Are they in the living room?" Amanda asks.

"I cannot find them."

"Your bedroom?"

"As I told you-"

"-I put them next to the lamp," Margaret calls, her voice carrying with it no accompanying footsteps to indicate she has risen from her chair.

Amanda turns. The motion dislodges her hand from his arm. "Which lamp, Mom?"

"On the table," Margaret says.

Amanda closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she calls back, "Which table?"

"I also tidied up her drawing," Margaret says, and Spock can feel Tabitha's reaction before it registers on her face, her alarm pushed across the kitchen towards him, a distress that is laced through with discomfort so strong that it surges in him, too.

"Mom," Amanda says and she's gone, halfway across the kitchen and then already through the doorway to where Margaret sits, Tabitha trailing after her. "Please."

Spock turns on the oven. Then he unfolds the cloth and wets it. Against his arm, his sleeve is still warm.

"It's right here, Tabitha," their mother calls and hands Tabitha her paper. Even bent over the counter, through the door Spock can see Amanda smooth down Tabitha's hair, a hand on each side of her head. "She was just cleaning up."

"These are not all of my pens," Tabitha says.

"Let's see if they're upstairs," Amanda says. The house creaks as they walk away. The floor here has always done this, and for too long as a child, he had been concerned with the structural integrity of it. Eventually he had come to realize it was simply a quirk of the age of the house and the manner of construction, wooden boards that flexed and shifted with any movement, though it still seems rather insecure, none of the solidity of the worn stones he would much prefer.

He wrings the cloth dry. When he looks up, Sarek is in the doorway once more.

"Mother is with Tabitha," Spock says, though the information does not compel his father to leave. Instead Sarek steps into the room.

"You were speaking to your mother of your work."

Surely, if Sarek heard that, he heard the rest, as well. Spock does not allow the discomfort of this fact to rise in him, stamping it firmly out.

He wipes at the streaks of flour his mother had missed. So like her to leave such patchiness behind. There's time later to finish, she would say, had she stayed. Another meal to cook, don't bother yourself with this just now.

"It is proceeding well?" Sarek asks.

Spock nods once. "It is acceptable." To admit otherwise would be a concession to another career he could have had. "It remains mentally stimulating," he says instead, which is at least true more often than not.

Sarek nods as well, a motion that Spock can see from the edge of his vision. He finds yet another smear of flour that has hardened, mixed with moisture and then dried, and Spock runs the cloth over it again and then again, the raised edge of it not diminishing under the repetition.

"Spock," his father says. "I would like to express my gratitude."

He stills but does not turn. Between them there is but a bare touch of their minds, and it has been a long time since anything more arced between them. A memory now only, and a distant one at that, back when Sybok filled his thoughts as well, and the hum of aunts and uncles and cousins, all left behind as a muted din when he moved to Earth. Now, here in this house, his mother and sister crowd into that space, and his thoughts are full of the conversation they have in the room above him.

"A clean kitchen is quite obviously logical," he says.

"For allowing your sister to visit."

"I was unaware I was given a choice."

"Rather than requiring her to stay here," Sarek says, and perhaps this was his intent all along, to simply ignore what Spock has to say. "Your mother would say that your sister is lucky to have you."

"Which is illogical," Spock says and resumes cleaning the counter.

"Of course." Sarek steps closer. Spock does not look up from his task. "While I am gratified to know that your work continues to be satisfying, as you yourself said, it is logical to cultivate multiple options. Applying for a position that will allow you to make full use of your talents is logical."

With this Sarek leaves. Still the flour on the counter does not dislodge, and Spock is reduced to scraping at it with the edge of his fingernail, chipping until it flakes away.

By the time the kitchen is suitably clean, his mother is fastening her coat in the front hall. Beside her, Margaret selects a pair of boots.

"You are going?" he asks, stepping from the kitchen to approach them into the front hall.

"For a minute," she says. An understatement, clearly. She zippers her coat to her chin. "No touching the _kriela_ ; you're in charge. I still have to finish the filling, and I don't want half of them eaten."

"Where?" he asks.

"A quick trip to the store," she says.

"Now?"

"We're just picking up some groceries," Amanda says. "We'll be quick."

"Amanda, really, there's no need," Margaret says, forgoing her boots to place her hands on her hips.

"I will go," Spock says, but it is apparently too late, because despite her protests, Margaret fastens her jacket.

"We're just going to get out of the house for a bit," his mother says, and gently does her mind push as his. "Would you go check on your sister?"

Why, he could ask, but he does not. Instead he nods, and when he does, his mother's hand finds his arm, touches quickly, softly, and then she is steering Margaret towards the door. Slowly, Spock climbs the stairs. They grate together, creaking under his steps. Downstairs, the front door closes.

Tabitha's head comes up when he enters their room, her palms pressed flat to her drawing.

"I thought you were grandmother," she says.

"Clearly, I am not." The cat has followed him. Now it approaches her and Tabitha watches it. On his bed, his padd rests. He sits beside it, the mattress dipping the edge of it towards him, a soft nudge at his thigh.

"What are you doing?" he finally asks. Needlessly, but the silence hangs between them. That morning Spock had found three of the pens on the floor, an oversight that he had attributed to Tabitha, though now, with the cat rubbing its cheek on the bed post, he reassess that assumption.

Outside the car hums as his mother starts it.

"Is your drawing undamaged?" he asks when Tabitha does not answer. He lays his hands on his thighs, watching Tabitha watch the cat. She draws her feet up beneath her. Even so, the cat moves closer, its eyes closing in a slow blink. Gently it lifts one paw to rest on the side of the mattress and then raises itself onto its back feet. Nose extended, it sniffs Tabitha's feet.

"I was speaking to mother," he says, as she curls her hands over her toes.

Tabitha looks up at him. "When?"

"In the kitchen." He closes his eyes. When he opens them, she is still watching him. "It is no matter."

"Grandmother moved my drawing."

"I know."

Grandmother would touch his padds, too, the books he brought with him, his school work. Long ago, he had learned to contain his belongings to this room, and even then there was no true privacy, not of the sorts to be found at home.

And then of course that had changed, as all things had, with Tabitha's birth, her small hands sorting through his belongings at any chance, any possible opportunity. Her curiosity would lap at his mind, unending and unsoothed. How entertaining she had found his possessions, how ceaselessly fascinating. And she had stared at him then, as she does now, only shorter, her face rounder, and her fingers clutched around a filmplast, a data chip, a book, confused at the vehemence with which he demanded his effects returned to him.

"I am not drawing a gorilla," Tabitha says. "Clearly. I do not know why she thinks that."

"What is it?" Spock asks, but Tabitha only draws her feet further away from the cat's nose and how it stretches its face towards her. Inexorable, its inquisitiveness, no matter how much Tabitha shrinks back.

"Grandmother is at the store," he tells her, speaking into the quiet. Their father would tell Tabitha to not leave her belongings about. Though Sarek would touch his fingers to Tabitha's shoulder, the top of her head, as he spoke. Spock lets out a breath. "You are at your leisure to continue drawing."

"I did not want her to look at it."

How easy platitudes would be. That their grandmother did not know, did not intend to, did not mean any ill by doing so. He can nearly hear the words, even unspoken as they are. Instead of offering them, he nods.

"We will be gone soon," he says.

Her hands smooth over her drawing again. Spock can feel her mind trace over the idea of home, school waiting for her, her classmates, the quiet of their home. How familiar those thoughts are. How often he would think of the same, perched on the edge of that bed, his feet swinging well above the floor, the room silent and solitary around him. And how similar that trepidation was, that quiet dismay stirred by the thought of staying and going both, no respite available, no relief in either option.

Now, his apartment awaits. The new semester. Nyota, too. Illogical, that urge to press his hand to his stomach, as if it might quell the leap that settles there, that jump inside of him. No, greater control over his thoughts and his body's reactions is called for, not the desire to dig his fingers into his own sternum.

When Tabitha's attention rises from her drawing, her eyes tracing over the back of it, it is to look out the window, her expression blank even if her thoughts are not, roiling like his own do, that uneasy, unending churn that he is so entirely accustomed to.

"Tabitha." She blinks and turns towards him even though he well knows how distant her mind is. "If you would like," he says and nudges his padd to this side, pushing it until it no longer rests again him. "You can again attempt to prevail in chess."

"Now?" she asks, but before he can answer, she pushes her pens aside and carefully lays her drawing on her bed, still face down. She slides forward, only to stop when the cat stares up at her, Tabitha's feet hovering above the floor and the cat's ears pricked forward.

For a moment, he contemplates guiding the cat away from her. Then, he considers further.

The cat makes a sound when he picks it up, and its entire body rumbles with its purr, a soft vibration in his palms.

"Perhaps further exposure to it would decrease your fear." The cat rubs its face over the side of his finger, finding the ridge of his knuckle and repeating the motion there.

"I am not afraid." Tabitha edges alongside her mattress. "That would be illogical. I am simply exercising due caution."

Still the cat purrs, its eyes a slow blink. "How practical," he says but extends the animal to her regardless.

"Cease," she says.

"I believe it is making an overture of friendship."

"Spock, desist."

"I am hardly culpable," he says, as he holds the animal out towards her. "You should return its interest. It is only polite."

"It is unclean," she says and finally slips past him to stand in the doorway. He replaces the cat on the ground, though towards her and watches her hurry backwards as it approaches in her direction. In this Tabitha is at least correct, for Spock is still picking hair from his sleeves when they reach the chess set.

The cat lurks at the edges of the room, as Tabitha sets up the board. She continually turns towards it. Sarek, in an armchair with his padd held in his hand, does not.

"There," Spock says when Tabitha hovers her pawn above the board.

"I know how to do it," she says and places it on the second tier. Then, she picks it up again, and pauses, a slight crease forming between her brows, before she moves it back once more.

In the kitchen, the oven beeps, and in Spock's pocket, his comm buzzes.

A flutter of hope sparks. From his chair, Sarek watches him. Spock rises, turns, and tips his comm away from Tabitha when he pulls it from his pocket, shielding the screen from how she cranes to see it.

"A moment," he requests. The oven is still beeping. In his hand, his comm is innocuous. Black casing and its gold cover, the same as ever. He reads the name on the ID screen once more, and it does not dissipate but remains there, clearly and plainly printed.

Tabitha leans forward in her chair. "I will take your turn for the efficiency of the game."

"Do not." In the hallway, he flicks open the cover. His back to the doorway and the room beyond it, he says, "Hello."

"Hey." He exhales at the sound of Nyota's voice. As if it may not have been her. Illogical, such disbelief in the face of fact. "I had to check up on how today was going. Any luck with the cat?"

He takes a step and then another towards the kitchen. Behind him, his father is speaking to Tabitha.

This should not be so difficult. Only hours ago, they spoke.

In the other room, Sarek answers a question, his voice a deep counterbalance to Tabitha's.

Spock shuts the kitchen door.

"We are still implementing all of your recommendations," he says.

"Ah, well, I'm not sure that my cat advice is entirely up to par."

"Perhaps you should consider developing your skills in such further," he says, as if he is in the office with her. He is not. He is in his grandmother's kitchen, and he watches his hand reach out to silence the oven when it again threatens to announce that it is warmed through. "There are many unknown species out there."

"Think we could run its vocalizations through a universal translator?" she asks. With one hand, he opens the oven. With the other, he holds his comm, likely far too tightly.

"We would have to reconfigure the variance sensor," he says as hot air rushes over him.

"You know, we should consider that we may not want to know what it's saying."

"I believe that, as it is, the cat's desire to be let into every room is clearly communicated," he says. He does not set down his comm to better aid balancing the tray.

"But does it actually go through the door? Does it want to?" she asks. "Can you imagine what we would find out?"

Gently he presses the oven closed. "If you are still looking for a topic for your thesis, you may have found quite a unique one."

"Perfect," she says. "I'll draw up a proposal."

"I will greatly anticipate reading your rational for the usefulness of this study."

"I'll have all the admirals convinced, I'm telling you. But I'll give you a sneak peak. When are you back? Before the start of the term?"

"Yes."

"Great." She pauses and then says, "Do you want to-"

"-Father says I cannot take your turn," Tabitha says, speaking before she has fully swung the door open. "Who is that?"

"I will be back momentarily," he says.

"I didn't mean to keep you," Nyota says quickly.

"Is that Nyota?" Tabitha reaches for his comm, which he swiftly raises above her ability to reach. "Is Gaila there too?"

"She's out," Nyota says. "Hi, Tabitha."

"Hello."

"I'm sure she'll be sorry to have missed you," Nyota says.

"Please give her my regards," Tabitha says.

"I will. And I'll give you your brother back too."

"Do not interrupt," he says, when he has folded his comm closed. Disbelief surges in him. As does the rate of his pulse. Odd, such a delayed reaction. Strange, truly, how it swells in him now.

"We are playing." She stares up at him. He waits for the astonishment to pass. It does not. "A process that is, in fact, interrupted by you."

She precedes him back to the living room. For what is likely a moment too long, he stares at the oven, unseeing. Then he takes a breath and releases it, sure that if he cannot force his mind to settle before he returns to the game, at least he can grip tightly to the walls of his own privacy, behind which his mind can twist and rush, through which her voice can repeat, and held within, he can allow himself the inescapable fact of her call.

He avoids his father's eyes when he sits. Surely it is noticed. So too must the tumult of his mind have been. His absence from the table. The speed at which he answered his comm.

He takes the time to study the board before his next move. His rooks remain, both of his knights, and one bishop, the other relinquished to Tabitha's queen.

His comm rings again and his hand covers the bulge of it in his pocket, the motion unbidden, entirely too fast. Unneeded and unnecessary.

"Is that Nyota?" Tabitha asks and extends her hand towards him. He stares at it and only belatedly does he recognize the overture, her request for a moment of Nyota's time, her assumption that Nyota has called once more.

Impossible, though, when even one call was unexpected. Unforeseen. Though not undesired. No, not at all.

Carefully he once more extracts his comm from his pocket, he answers it with none of his earlier quickness. Instead, he holds the comm in his hand for a long moment.

He stands. Sarek is watching him.

"I apologize," he says and walks out of the house with his comm, before he slowly opens it there on the front porch.

"Captain," he says.

"Mr. Spock. I hope it's not a bad time."

His heart is pounding. Sickeningly so. When it began to do so, Spock is now unsure. "It is not."

"I got your message."

Spock nods, but of course Pike is not there to see him. "I see," he finally says, for lack of anything better.

"You know, we have a lot of officers apply simply for the name of the ship. Others just to get off a dirtside rotation."

"Of course," he says. His voice is even. And yet, unbelievable, all of this.

"It's a pretty prestigious posting."

"I am aware." He swallows. This should not be as harrowing as it is. Surely there is a thread of logic to be found here, one that will quiet his mind. Slowly, cautiously, he takes a breath. "It is not untrue that I would like to be stationed elsewhere than Earth, but I would also impress upon you my desire and aptitude for the deep space nature of the ship's mission, the likes of which are unlikely to be found elsewhere in the fleet." He does not swallow a second time, though it does occur to him he would rather like to. He is unsure as to what to say next. In this, and in so much else, he has no guidance. And yet between the choice of abandoning the effort all together and soldiering onward, only one will result in the posting, even if the possibility is slim. A dream. A single, impossible, thread of hope. A goal he can scarcely bear the thought of. One only, possibly, achieved a single careful step at a time. "Furthermore," he begins, "while I do not have a wealth of relevant experience, my career has still well prepared me to step into the role."

"So you think you can do it."

Spock is unsure whether the inflection in Pike's voice qualifies his words as a statement or a question. Rain drips from the porch eve, splattering down against the stone steps that lead up to where he is standing. Two more drops fall before he says, "I would not have applied if I thought otherwise."

"Well, listen, why don't you come up here to the ship and convince me of that."

Again Spock nods, despite himself. Were he not holding his comm so tightly, he is certain he would shift his grip on it.

Then he looks back inside, his family there framed in the window. Tabitha has maneuvered one leg beneath her and is leveraging herself up on it to better reach the table. Her hand hovers first above her own piece, and then one of Spock's. Insatiable, she is. So utterly, thoroughly unwavering. Since the beginning, a trait unlikely to ever cease.

His mind is unspooled, loose, and untethered so he is hardly surprised when his attention on her calls Tabitha's focus to him, nor when she rises from the table. "It is your turn," she says, one hand pushing the door open. "Again."

"Is that the sister?" Pike asks.

"Spock," Tabitha says.

"It is," he says. He stood just here last night, similar incredulity flowing through him. Their father will play with Tabitha, were Spock to leave. The logical choice. Perfectly so.

Tabitha crosses her arms. "You said we would play."

He can tell her that he now cannot. He can walk upstairs, find his uniform in his bag, and be in his car on his way to the nearest transport station before she has decided on her next move, a knight held in her fingers and her eyes tracking over the board. How straightforward, that would be. How coldly rational, to simply slip away, the door falling shut behind him.

"I am currently occupied," Spock says into his comm. At the door to the house, Tabitha waits. "I will be available in an hour."

"We'll make it two, and I'll have you back for dinner." Pike might be smiling, though he often sounds similarly at ease. "I'm thinking there might be plenty of time to pull you away in the future."


	9. Chapter 9

For some time upon beaming back to Earth, Spock simply stands still. The clouds still hang low, a steely gray. A breeze flattens the sleeve of his uniform against his arm. The air smells of the rain that threatens, of damp earth and the sweet green of growing plants that is so absent on Vulcan. In space as well, the _Enterprise_ full of the notes of recycled air.

In his side, his heart is thrumming.

When he opens the door, it is to the tableau of dinner. A bowl rests in the middle of the table and the scent is familiar but Terran. Likely his mother's creation, adjusted, as it were, for ingredients available here on Earth. There is a pause in the clink of silverware and the quiet conversation as he approaches, four faces turned towards him.

"I apologize," he says and takes his seat by rote. He places his napkin on his lap, adjusts his fork so that it is parallel to his plate, and when his father extends the serving dish to him, he takes it.

"How was it?" his grandmother asks, already dipping her spoon into her bowl again.

"Fine." He ladles a serving for himself, steam rising up in a rush. His mind is so full as to be nearly blank. How curious, that suppressed hum is. "Thank you."

His mother's spoon is poised halfway between her bowl and her mouth. Her lips purse and her eyes track over his face. Carefully, he sets down the serving dish, and she takes her interrupted bite. "We were just discussing the Parrises Squares match from the other night," she says.

"I did not watch it." He never does, though he is aware of the sport through his human colleagues, and of the standing of Earth's team this season through Nyota. He could watch the matches. Should. It would give him a topic to discuss with her. The thought is more pleasing than it should be, and he is unsure of his current ability to aptly shield the tremor that rises in him at the notion, the effort rendered more difficult from both his family's proximity and their interest prodding at him, insistent. Distracting. He tries his soup, which is entirely too hot to eat.

"The Mars colony did quite well," his mother says.

"Did they win?"

"No, but they came close."

"I understand that their offensive line is hardly as adept as in previous seasons." Which is not a verbatim statement of Nyota's but could be , since Spock knows no more than that, just what she mentioned in a manner that he believes could be termed off-hand. Of course little that she does is casual. He has met few others driven by the same intent and purpose that she has in spades.

He takes a second bite of soup. His pulse has still not slowed.

"It's Earth's defense," Margaret says. When she pulls open a roll, crumbs scatter across the table. "Best it's ever been. Really, Vulcan should get a team together. What a match that would be."

This stirs no comment, and Spock does not make an attempt to develop one. Instead he pulls his spoon through his soup and nearly gives into the urge to allow his mind to wander back through the bright white of new corridors, the buzz of the ship about to come to life.

But even the glint of that thought sparks a leap in his stomach that he cannot curb. From his bowl, steam rises, a curling twist that he watches, willing the hammer of his blood to recede.

After dinner he stands on the back porch, his comm in his hand. Twice he opens it, only to fold it shut again both times. Words hardly spring readily to mind, or at least not coherent ones, and he scarcely can envision Nyota being impressed with the silence that would likely meet her greeting, his complete inability to articulate his thoughts.

The idea that he could simply call her is already enough of a jolt. A precedent now established that still reels him. A fundamental, deep-seated shift, altered in the span of a day, after so many weeks, the entirety of months of stagnancy between them.

Unnecessary, the strength of this reaction, though the acknowledgement of such hardly serves to dispel it.

"We saved this for you." At his elbow, Tabitha extends a fork and a plate, in the center of which sits a _kriela_. He did not hear her approach, which is a lapse to be sure. Illogical, that. Immensely so.

"Thank you," he says.

"They are better when they are warm."

In his hand, the plate is solid. Heavier than the ones used in the Academy mess hall, and so too the ones he has in his apartment. "I am sorry to have missed the occasion."

"Mother has instructed me to ask how your interview went." Tabitha crosses her arms. "I told her it was illogical to send an emissary in her own place."

"It is," he agrees. The bite he takes is flavorful, though the walnuts are hardly a serviceable substitute. He extends the plate back to Tabitha. It is when she has taken a bite of her own that he says, "It went well."

How odd, to speak it out loud. How unbelievable it still is, despite the fact of it, the actuality of the day he just lived through, the reality of the warm weight of Pike's hand on his shoulder, the Captain's smile.

"Mother predicted as much," Tabitha say. "Do you want the remainder of this?"

"You may eat it." He waits for her to retreat inside, though she does not. Instead she stands with him in the late evening dusk, the world around them blue and gray as the sun slips unseen behind the clouds, chewing slowly on the corner of the _kriela_.

"Are you leaving soon?" she asks as she replaces the fork on the edge of the plate.

"I will return to San Francisco with you."

"Earth," she corrects, as if he were unclear on her question. "Nyota said that the ship is nearly complete."

"You two apparently covered every conversation topic available," he says.

"Will Nyota go with you? And Gaila?"

"I am not certain." He rests his hands on the railing, though does not lean into it, despite how he might wish to. "Perhaps. If they want to." He lets out a breath. Needlessly, of course, the release of air entirely shakier than is necessary. Nyota has already said as much, her interest in the ship unabating, unwavering. "It will be some time yet."

"Can I be in Starfleet?"

He does not manage to mask his surprise, neither in his voice, nor in the rapidity of his turn towards her. "You wish to?"

"Gaila says that I would be excellent in Engineering."

He blinks. "In all likelihood, you would be." He does not shake his head, though the idea to do so occurs to him. "You truly would wish for a career in Starfleet?"

She is so young. And so small. Her head barely higher than the porch railing and her hand forced to grip the plate tightly against its weight, her fingers not long enough to balance it from beneath. He well remembers the frustration of that railing, standing on this porch so many years ago, unable to comfortably see over it. Then, the idea of a life away from Vulcan had hardly occurred to him, an idea for his future so distant as to be nearly nonexistent. No, it was those final years there, when the Science Academy had loomed large in his future, and the continued disharmony of life on Vulcan had been larger still. And even then the notion of of leaving had been abstract and hazy to the degree that, despite sitting for the Academy's entrance exams, it had not seemed to truly be a possibility, until suddenly it was. A singular avenue of his future, chosen in a moment and laid out across the years that followed. It is not common to allow himself to wonder what else might have been, but now and again the urge rises, and he pushes it aside. What is, is, and he is far from dissatisfied. The opposite, in fact, in ways that he might have never anticipated, never let himself await.

"You left." Tabitha picks up the fork and pauses before her next bite to say, "And Sybok did as well."

"That was-" He does shake his head. How odd, to hear his brother's name spoken here. He does not turn towards the house behind them. Instead, he looks down at Tabitha, at how she picks at the _kriela_ again with the fork. "That is rather different."

"It is not."

What she understands of all of that, he does not know, though he is well familiar with inferences drawn in the face of a lack of information, comprehension grasped for, even as the attempt falls short. Has never known what she believes and has never asked. Never heard his brother spoken of after that day he left, and even the thought of him was whisked away before it could bear any weight in the arc of thought he shared with his parents. Questions he had were stilled, bitten back and unspoken. Though perhaps he should not be surprised that Tabitha has seized on what she can. Unerringly curious, she has always been. Eager and keen to explore the corners of his life. And Sybok has long hung as a specter over the family, a conspicuous absence so thoroughly ignored as to be laid out in plain sight, empty halls and empty rooms. A vacant, gaping loss against Spock's mind, poorly filled with the minutia of passing days, even when his thoughts were crowded back, pushed at with the force of Tabitha. So long ago now, all of that. Years and years, months doubling back on themselves, and the course of his life shifting over again, counted out in shaky first steps, scribbles on a paper, a book held in small hands, balanced on the table when Tabitha could not hold it herself, determined to read it all the same.

She is watching him with that same tenacity now.

"Sybok left because he did not want to live his life on Vulcan," Spock finally says.

Her head shakes. "That is what you did."

Spock feels his forehead tighten, despite himself. "I did not."

How wrong she is, though an explanation as to exactly how fails him, lingers just at the edge of thought, ungraspable. Vague and indistinct. It was Father, Spock could say, there in the hallway while Sybok packed, cold and still as his eldest son walked out. But he does not. Will not. Not to Tabitha, to whom Sarek reads, lays his palm over the top of her head, gives pens and pencils to, eats on a table marked with paint and ink. Walks to the park after school, so that Tabitha might explore. How terrible Sybok's idea for his life had been to Sarek. How inexcusable, inappropriate. But those standards furnished on Sybok, demanded in the halls of their house so long before Tabitha ever crawled there, took toddling, slow steps, have never been pushed upon her life.

What an adjustment that was. How utterly different his final years on Vulcan had been, from how his life had started. Quicksand shifts of expectations, allowances, revised and revised again, unendingly.

Spock closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he looks down at his sister.

"If you want to move from Vulcan, a career in Starfleet is hardly your sole option," Spock finally says. Surely Sybok never considered it, though if he did, Spock was not privy to such thoughts. There is much he did not know at the time, kept sheltered due to his age, their separate houses, the lives they led that intersected but never truly ran conjointly. Not completely, at least. A shadow of a life together, indistinct and poorly formed from what it might have been, given the chance.

"But can I go?" she asks.

"If you would like to."

"Without attending your school?"

He looks down at her once more. Though not as far down as he once had, when she was only as tall as his waist, his knees. Then, he had to bend over to reach her. Now, he can easily pick the fork up from the plate she holds. "That is hardly important."

"Or completion a _kahs-wan_?"

He rests the fork on the side of the _kriela_ but pauses before slicing off a bite of it. "It is not a necessity."

"Nor am I bonded."

"I hardly am either," he says, although he is not certain that she is listening. No, she is staring out into the yard and the neighborhood beyond, the plate held in both hands, and the corners of her eyes creased. Gently he replaces the fork. When she does not react, he lets his mind reach for hers, a careful, soft nudge. "That is a dubious line of reasoning, at best."

His mother is moving about in the kitchen. He cannot hear her, but knows she is there all the same, a prick of her curiosity reaching him, though whatever lies under the crease of Tabitha's forehead is well concealed, as there is no edge of concern pushing at them from Amanda. For so long Tabitha's emotions grated loud and jarring against his own, a blaring force of all that she felt until she was old enough to come to know that she should control her mind, and older still until she could begin to. Though Spock well understands the struggle, the difficulty of always grasping for that cool, calm wash of logic that comes so easily to their father. It was simple for Sybok too, his mind trained since birth the same as Spock's and yet an aptitude for such control laid down deep in his genes in a way that Spock always fell short of. For so long Spock had been at a loss to keep up and then, suddenly, it had not mattered, Sybok's absence a wide, gaping fracture in their family and then in Spock's mind as he pulled back and away.

"Tabitha," he says and then has to stop, since he is not entirely certain what he intends to say next. His mind is tender, sore, a deep dive from the bloom of elation that had filled him earlier. Or perhaps that is hers, a fragile crack that spans the arm's length between them. "You are fortunate to not be bonded."

"You were," she says quickly. "And at my age you had already undertaken-"

"-A _kahs-wan_ is not-" He stops before he can tell her that it is unimportant since the words sit discordant in his mind, even unspoken. He tightens his hands on the rail. How quiet the desert had been. But it had brought no peace. No, just the unease of an unavoidable, inescapable solitude. An isolation similar to so much of his time on Vulcan, writ large in the darkness of the desert night, sun heated rocks a poor way to keep warm as they cooled, awaiting a dawn that was still hours off. "If you would like to undertake one, you have hardly missed the opportunity."

"I am older than the majority of my peers who have done so." With one finger, she pushes the _kriela_ towards the center of the plate. "And my school does not offer the proper preparatory courses."

"It does not?" he asks needlessly, as she already told him. "Father could teach you."

She nods, silent.

It is hardly the same. He full well knows this.

Tabitha looks up at him. "Mother was displeased when you went."

"I was made well aware." Thoroughly. "Tabitha, Mother and Father are not infallible." She is still watching him. He lets out a breath, her confusion reaching him, laced through with that curiosity he is so used to from her. "Being bonded was an ill-advised choice that Mother and Father made on my behalf, and given the opportunity, I would have firmly rejected the decision." Did reject it, in the end, his mind finally freed of the jarring grind of T'Pring's thoughts against his, discordant and rasping. To have avoided those years entirely would have been advantageous indeed, though he well remembers watching at an age younger than Tabitha is, as his classmates around underwent the process, desperate for a chance of his own. But such hindsight is always clearer after the fact, as their mother is so fond of saying. A chance to do it over again differently, is all that is needed. "You are fortunate that they have quite apparently made different choices for you."

"I do not want them to," Tabitha says, "And yet they do so, regardless."

"You have the ability to tell them so," he says, and where she was looking up at him, she now shifts to once again stare over the yard. "Or-" He takes the fork from the plate and uses it to cut off another piece of _kriela_. "Though you will incite a considerable amount of ire, you are always able to undertake a _kahs-wan_ on your own."

"Mother has specifically instructed me to not follow your example."

"Prescient." He takes another bite. "But perhaps not logical."

Though an argument could be made either way, he is sure, and given the chance, how their father would interpret it would likely be the deciding factor. As is typical, a circumstance he is so familiar with. Though resolute as Tabitha is, perhaps her resolve is what his was not, that persistence coming so easily to her, those aspirations she holds that she simply attains, a goal set and then achieved. Unfaltering, she is. Tireless and relentless, ever since she blinked her eyes open and let out her first cries. How similar you two are, their mother had said, holding Tabitha, green faced and shrieking, her smile traveling between the two of them, as Spock had only watched, wide eyed and silent.

"You said you did not want that," Tabitha says, as he digs his fork into the side of the _kriela_ once more.

"I changed my mind."

"Equivocation is hardly logical."

"Revision of opinion is," he says and takes the last bite as she watches, frowning.

Inside, his mother greets him with a smile the likes of which he has not seen in some time, broad and wide, even as her joy pushes at him across the room.

"Spock," she says. Her hands are raised towards him, outstretched and beckoning.

"That was quite appetizing," he says.

"Your father and I are so proud," she says, and he allows her to take his hands in hers. How warmly her thoughts wrap around him. How gentle she is, when he lets her hug him.

He should go upstairs to change from his uniform, no need for the stiff crispness of the fabric here. Though delaying as he does, rinsing his plate and letting his mother follow him into the kitchen, he waits for his father to correct her, to replace his mother's assumption with a cool, tepid offer of logic. But it does not come, and when he turns, Tabitha is there with their father and Sarek's eyes meet his own above her head. It is a moment before Spock looks away, blinking.

…

"I think we should stay tonight," Amanda says. With the finality with which she places her bag in the trunk of Spock's car, he hardly has more of an answer than his father does, or Tabitha there, one of her padds still in her hand, all three of them turned at the force of Amanda's declaration. All morning Tabitha had read, the contents of the padd far greater than apparently she or Nyota had anticipated. Surely another copy exists on Vulcan, though Sarek's suggestion of obtaining one was met with silence.

"We have a shuttle reservation," Sarek says. Spock has long recognized that tone, the one that his father often employs in such instances, an even and plying way of speaking to Amanda, as if his voice alone could induce her to be logical.

"We'll get a room in San Francisco," she says. "It's only one more night, we can reschedule the shuttle for tomorrow."

"Tabitha has school tomorrow," Sarek says.

"She's been out all week. What's another day?" Amanda shuts the trunk with enough purpose that Spock cannot help but think the matter is determined, if it had not already been, before Amanda even first voiced the thought.

"Spock has work," Sarek says.

"We'll be gone first thing in the morning." Over the car, Amanda meets Spock's eyes. "I want to take you out to dinner to celebrate."

"That is hardly necessary," he says.

"You have been providing him meals for several days now," Sarek says.

"I am amenable to not immediately returning to school," Tabitha says, and if the matter was not previously determined, the resignation that settles in Sarek is ill concealed, to the degree that Spock knows the decision is now made, and with certitude.

Still. He catches his mother's eye in the mirror as they settle into their seats. "Celebrating a promotion is neither-"

"-Logical nor sensible." She frowns in a manner he has come to know is thoughtful, though only superficially so. "No, perhaps you were going to say 'obligatory'."

"It is hardly customary, either."

"Well, you don't have to enjoy it. But I always wished I hadn't listened to you and had done something when you got into Starfleet, so this is my chance."

Gaining admittance to the Science Academy had been a far greater achievement, though he is certain his mother will no more entertain his argument on that front than she will dispel her plan for the night. Now that it is formed, it is quite as good as already done, a fact Spock is certain he is not alone in reconciling himself to.

Still he says, "An irrational line of reasoning."

"I'm quite happy with my illogical nature, thank you." Her mouth flattens. "I just want-" She shakes her head. When she blinks, it is not once, but twice, and then once more, entirely too rapidly. "I just want to spend time with you all."

He nods. "Very well."

Behind them, his grandmother's house fades into the matching ones that make up the rest of the block and then is out of sight as he turns the corner. When they will return, he hardly knows, though twice that morning Amanda had prompted her mother to visit them, countering every mention that Amanda and Sarek did not come often enough with a reminder that the trip to Vulcan was of the same length. He is certain similar comments await him in his own future, likely with the added fact reiterated to him of the Academy's schedule and the leave provided between semesters. Of course, now his schedule will be different. Precisely how, he does not yet know, only that changes will come to his life well before the ship departs, and that the balance and rhythm to his days will shift far sooner than he ever might have anticipated.

The thought should hardly be as exciting as it is, though try as he might to suppress the thrill that sits in him, it lodges deep and burns the entire way back to the city and all that awaits him there.

A decision must be made as he approaches the city, though Amanda is watching the landscape rush by, and Tabitha is once more bent over her padd, her eyes tracking back and forth. Beside him, his father is looking at the road, though Spock is nearly certain he has slipped into a light meditation. Even now Sarek's exhaustion lingers heavy in Spock's own mind. Uncomfortable, it is, even as it diminishes with each passing day.

"Mother," he says softly.

"How about _Piar'ash_? Near the Embassy?" she asks.

"You all must want a more varied cuisine than visiting Earth to eat Vulcan food," he says.

"Hardly." Her hand alights on his shoulder, squeezes, and then is gone.

"It will be busy there." Crowded, with the hour of the evening, so many others spilling out into the city to seek out dinner.

"That's not any matter," she says.

He is correct in how long it takes to find a place to park, circling city blocks until he is nearly ready to suggest returning to his apartment and making use of public transit. But then a space opens, and Amanda is drawing Tabitha's attention from her padd, and Sarek is stepping from the car, leaving Spock to turn it off and wait for a break in traffic to open his own door.

There on the sidewalk, his family is a picture of calm amid the swirl of pedestrians. Tabitha has been compelled to leave her padd in the car, and Amanda is searching among storefronts for the restaurant, and his father stands with his hands easily behind his back.

"What a beautiful night," Amanda says and briefly leans into Sarek. A motion she would not presume if they were on Vulcan, but here among humans who walk with their hands linked, their arms slung around each other, it is hardly noteworthy. "And no fog. Are you tired of it yet?"

This to him, an illogical inquiry. "It is only weather," Spock says.

"Seems awfully damp."

"As is Seattle," his father says and steps away as Amanda turns to him, her hand catching and tugging at his sleeve and her amused frustration clear in Spock's mind and surely his father's as well. "It is simply a logical comparison."

"I think you're just looking forward to not getting rained on," Amanda says, her hand still on him. "Also logical, right?"

At this she turns to Spock and then next to her as well. And then she turns slightly further, her fingers slipping from Sarek's sleeve. "Tabitha?"

In the crowd of the sidewalk, Spock cannot see her either, though she is close by. Simply has slipped away. But what is commonplace at home registers as alarm in Amanda's mind, panic shot through in a wave that washes over Spock as she searches through the crowd for his sister, alone in the swirl of it.

And yet when he spots her, she is not by herself. Instead she is already engaged in what appears to be a rather animated discussion, the other participant of which is hardly unfamiliar.

"Look who's here," Gaila says when he approaches, cutting through the groups of pedestrians to reach them.

"Hello," he says.

On campus it would be 'sir', the stiffness of uniforms demanding a formality Gaila has hardly ever been inclined towards. Here, blocks from campus and days away from the semester beginning again, she simply says, "Hello to you too." And then she smiles. "You have good timing."

"I am the one with the excellent timing," Tabitha says, but then Nyota has slipped from the crowd, her attention on Gaila before it flicks to him once and then twice, and she abruptly stops walking.

Her tongue darts out to wet her lips. "Hi."

He feels his mouth part. How striking she is, there only steps from him. How utterly unexpected. How unbelievable, the fact of her watching him, her presence so suddenly rendered. It takes him a moment too long to manage, "Good evening."

"Tabitha," his mother says, stepping around him, where he is stock still on the sidewalk. "Please do not do that."

"I was with Gaila," Tabitha says and points.

Her gesture only draws notice to Nyota beside her. Spock's own attention has not wavered from that point, where Nyota tucks her hair back behind her ear. The motion swings her earring, a pendulum of motion next to the line of her neck.

"This-" Spock stops. He is forced to try a second time. He does not look at his father. "This is my mother, Amanda." Surely her more formal address would be appropriate. He attempts to not let the realization cause him to pause. "And my father."

"I'm Gaila," Gaila says with the ease that she always has. Spock has never thought to envy that in her, though now it occurs to him how much simpler this moment might be, to be able to brush all of this away, to settle his pulse, to still the peculiar prick of his skin. He blinks. And takes a breath that is likely entirely too deep, completely too apparent in its length. "And this is Nyota."

"Hello," she says and rapidly do her eyes flick between Amanda and Sarek, back and forth again before they fall on Tabitha. "Hi, there."

"What a coincidence," Gaila says, clapping her hands together. "What are you all up to? We were going for a walk. To pass the time. There's a lot of it these days."

"We are eating dinner," Tabitha says.

"Right now?" Gaila asks. She puts her hands on her hips. "Where's your food?"

"We do not have it yet," Tabitha says. "Clearly."

"Tabitha," Amanda says, her hand curling over Tabitha's small shoulder. Her eyes are on Nyota. When Amanda tugs lightly at Tabitha, Tabitha does not move.

Instead, Tabitha points to the restaurant half a block away, leaning forward against Amanda's hand to speak to Gaila. "We are going to eat dinner there. Mother wishes to celebrate."

"You are? How fun. Well, not fun. Logical, though, in all likelihood." Gaila bends down towards Tabitha and asks in a loud whisper, "What are you celebrating?"

Tabitha twists from beneath Amanda's hand to lean close enough to whisper in return. What she says, Spock cannot hear over the noise of the street, but he feels a flush rise in him all the same. Unwanted, that is. Entirely so, but the concentration required to dispel it is beyond him.

"Well, damn," Gaila says. Immediately she straightens, her hand flying to her mouth. "I'm sorry," she says to Tabitha, and then again to Amanda. "Sorry. But, wow. Congratulations."

This, to Spock. He manages to nod. Nyota is watching him. He can quite clearly, entirely too distinctly, feel his own pulse. If Gaila does not tell Nyota, Tabitha will. Of this he is certain, and already Gaila is turning, her elbow coming into contact with Nyota's arm and a smile spreading over her face.

As always, hesitancy swells, and in the stretch of time that lengthens, too long and drawn out, he can no more tell Nyota himself than he can move his feet from the place where he stands, rooted there since he first saw her. But Gaila is fully smiling now, and in the surety that hearing her share the news will be more disagreeable than doing so himself, he forces past that grip of tightness inside of him to say, "Captain Pike made an offer of the position."

And he accepted it. Illogical to leave this part out, except that Nyota clearly infers it, her eyes opening wide.

"Really?" Nyota asks, and then her hand is on his arm so briefly that it might not have happened. But there is an indent in his jacket, and her touch pressed into his skin beneath, and he is certain without looking that the gesture, as slight as it is, has drawn the attention of both of his parents.

He swallows. Still, he feels flushed. Where she touched, his arm pricks.

"You two should join us," Amanda says and quickly does Spock look at her, though his abruptness does not diminish the smile that has crossed her mouth. "It would be fun."

"Mother," he says, though he fails to follow this with any further statement.

"Oh no," Gaila says brightly, her hands clasping. She gives Tabitha a smile. "I have a thing."

"Again?" Tabitha asks.

"Inconvenient, I know." Gaila shrugs, both palms held out in front of her. "But what are you going to do?"

"I…" Nyota licks her lips again. Her look at Gaila is only answered with another smile. The line of her throat works as she swallows. "I, um-"

"Please," Sarek says, and Spock turns to him. But any effort to speak comes too late, for Sarek says, "Join us."

Many have been given over to simply nodding in response to such a direct request of his father's and Nyota is no different, her mouth closing and her eyes darting to Spock's. He hardly has an answer for her, and one does not come to him as his parents turn towards the restaurant. No, not when he is illogically, unreasonably unsure that his senses are returning to him any reality of this situation.

And yet he is fully, wholly aware when Nyota once more touches his arm, just there, just above his elbow.

"That's amazing," she whispers, and he can only agree with her. Astonishing, truly, all of this.

Inside the restaurant, Tabitha takes a chair beside Nyota, leaving one remaining on her other side at the round table. Slowly Spock seats himself in it. Nyota studies the table, touches her fingertips to the fork laid there, so different from a Terran one, and then looks around the room, at a painting of Lake Yuron and another of Shi'Kahr's skyline, a potted _nah'ru_ vine trained up the wall, it's flowers open, blooming red.

"You are a cadet," his father says into the silence.

She retracts her hand from her fork. "I am."

"What are you studying?"

"Xenolinguistics." She does not look at Spock, which is convenient, as he does not then need to return the attention. His mother knows this. And therefore in all likelihood, so too does his father. A detail Spock had shared months ago, when the fact that Nyota was his student was benign. Hardly noteworthy. Insignificant and unremarkable.

When she shifts in her seat, their elbows brush. Quickly, she tucks her hand into her lap.

"What are your career goals?" Sarek asks.

"I'd like to be a comm officer," she says. Her lips work together briefly, before she clears her throat. "On the bridge, preferably."

"And what did you do prior to Starfleet?" Sarek asks.

"I have a degree from the Institute of Advanced Mathematics," she says.

"In what, specifically?"

"I focused on multi-level modeling of individuals' language learning rate and retention." She smooths her skirt over her thighs. "Specifically those who were learning Standard as a second language."

"Tabitha says that you are currently conducting your own research," Sarek says. "Her description suggests you have continued in a similar vein."

"Father signed the form," Tabitha says. "I have it for you."

"Perfect," Nyota says, and when she turns to Tabitha, her shoulder passes close to his own. Across the table, his mother is watching him. "I spent yesterday transcribing your interview."

"Where were you raised?" Sarek asks as the waiter approaches with menus.

"Mombasa, Kenya," she says.

"How was it?" Tabitha asks.

"It was great," Nyota says. "Really interesting data."

Sarek forgoes his menu to ask, "How do you intend to apply your research to your career goals?"

"Father," Spock says.

"It's a useful grounding in the theoretical basis of our universal translators," Nyota says. In her lap, her fingers are laced together. "And it allows for a more nuanced foundation on which our acoustic engineers can improve translation capacity and efficiency."

"That was Spock's area of focus as a cadet," Sarek says. "One of many."

"The _Nyasasaurus_ was found in Kenya," Tabitha says. Amanda is smiling, though when Spock turns to her, she raises her glass of water and sips from it, silent. "It is the earliest known dinosaur."

"Those books were interesting?" Nyota asks.

"Fascinating," Tabitha says, and Nyota smiles. "Did you know that it predates other fossil findings by approximately twelve million years?"

"No, I didn't."

"Its three sacral vertebrae suggest plesiomorphy."

"I didn't know that either."

Tabitha's eyes narrow. "Gaila said that you had expertise in dinosaurs."

"It was-" Nyota purses her lips for a moment. "Relative. A relative measure, to her own knowledge."

"I see."

"So really, it's quite fortunate that you're here." Beneath the table, Nyota smooths her skirt once more, adjusting the hem of it. Again her elbow brushes close to him. "You know, there's an exhibit on them at the Natural History Museum. I don't think I told you that the other day."

"May we go tomorrow?" Tabitha asks Sarek, who shakes his head. She turns towards Amanda next, apparently seeking a different response.

"Next time," Amanda says.

"When?" Tabitha asks.

His mother lowers her menu, her eyes on him. "Soon."

While his mother is ordering her meal, Nyota's head dips towards him and quietly she asks, "Are you going to help me figure out what I should eat?"

"If you would like," he says, and when she tips her menu towards him, he takes the side of it in his hand.

"Did you really get that promotion?" she whispers, bent near to him.

"I did," he says, and her smile is worth the fact that his parents are watching.

…

Outside the sky is lit up pink and yellow, a haze held in the warm air that is so different from the dust that covers Vulcan at this time of evening, cast about by the day's winds and hung suspended as night stills the air. Beside him, Nyota is also looking about, though likely the sight to her is unremarkable, another Terran city with pedestrians filling the sidewalks, humans moving about their lives. To be raised here, with that easy comfort, is as foreign as the restaurant is here, placed as it is between Terran cafes and shops, a small slice of Vulcan in the teeming mass of the city.

"Spock, we'll get our things from your car," his mother says. "It's not a long walk to the Embassy."

He turns. "I will drive you."

"It's not a problem. Go enjoy your night," Amanda says. Her hand lays on Tabitha's shoulder, her thumb rubbing back and forth.

Tabitha ducks from beneath their mother's touch. "I will remain with Spock."

"Pardon?" Spock asks.

"Oh, will you now?" Amanda asks.

"I do not want to sleep at the Embassy."

"Well," Amanda says and turns to Sarek. Spock is sure that were he human, his father would shrug in his indifference. He is not, so only a soft blandness pushes at Spock's mind in his answer. Amanda looks at Spock, and then at Nyota.

"Mother," Spock says.

Surely Nyota is unaware of all that is unspoken, the determination that rests behind how Tabitha watches their mother, Sarek's fatigue that has worn off but still lingers, and now Amanda's growing enjoyment of the moment. He could likely impart to his mother how little he cares for accompaniment tonight, how the thought of having his evening to himself to spend as he wish is so much preferable. Though he grows certain, as the moment stretches onward, that Amanda is already aware of all this and, furthermore, already decided.

"If you don't mind, Spock," she says. She is smiling. "What's another bit of sibling bonding time."

Tabitha's forehead creases. "We are bonded."

"I know." Amanda's hand is pale on top of Tabitha's dark hair. "But it can't hurt."

"Hurt what?" Tabitha asks.

"We'll see you in the morning," Amanda says in answer, and before Tabitha can pull away, she bends and presses a kiss to her cheek. "Have a nice night."

"The rooms at the Embassy are entirely more comfortable," Spock tells Tabitha, when their parents are gone around the corner. Beside him, Nyota remains silent.

"May we go see the sea lions?" she asks.

How different this might be, offering Nyota a ride back to campus, lingering with her in the warm evening, no particular hurry to be anywhere. He lets out a breath and does not allow himself to look in the direction his parents walked. Instead he takes her in, still standing near to him, her hands clasped together and her eyes on him in return.

How little he wants to say goodnight to her right now.

"Would you like to accompany us?" he asks.

"Yes," she says quickly.

Tabitha precedes them to the water, darting through the crowd. Spock can catch sight of her now and again when groups of pedestrians part, but the effort he makes to do so is poor at best, her thoughts against his far better an appraisal than sight. And it leaves his attention for Nyota next to him, how close they walk, the way each time she speaks, she turns towards him, chin tipped up and smiling.

"I trust you did not have other plans tonight," he says.

"Oh, no, not at all."

"I do not wish to impose."

"No," she says, more firmly this time. "You're not."

He nods. "I am glad."

"Your parents are nice," she says.

"I am not certain I have ever heard that word applied to them." He watches Tabitha look to the left and then the right and then walk quickly across the intersection ahead of them. His mother, perhaps, has been described as such. But his father, no. Hardly. It is a word so foreign to Spock's understanding of him as to be nonsensical. A polite, banal statement from Nyota. Appreciated for the effort, though inaccurate.

"My parents are-" He has to stop, uncertain of what he was intending to say. A lapse, to be sure. Too much lies there between himself and Sarek to be summed up in something so small as a sentence, too many years laid down between them for such simplicity. That, Nyota would understand. And he can tell her, given the time

In the face of his pause, Nyota simply nods, apparently filling his pause with an inference of her own.

He cannot help but wonder if she would be willing to share it with him.

"Thank you for joining us," he says instead. "It was-" He refuses to hesitate again and forges onwards before he can do so - "Agreeable."

They stop at the intersection, the light before them red and Tabitha already a half a block away. The bay stretches out before her, and even as he watches, she reaches the railing that divides the sidewalk from the park below, grass leading to rocks and then the water's edge.

"I'm glad you called the other day," Nyota says, and the light turns green, and he pauses, one foot already off the curb, and his attention swinging to her beside him.

He is growing accustomed to that rise of joy that has recently surged so often. His attempt to quell it is as feeble as his supervision of Tabitha. But there she stands, hands spread on the rail and raised up on her toes to see over, and he can no more call out to her to needlessly return to him than he can staunch the thrill Nyota's words stir in him.

"I am pleased," he says. He cannot lie, and it is only the truth.

While Tabitha remains fixed on the sea lions, their heads a round globe above the water and their bodies lumpy masses where they have hauled themselves onto rocks, Nyota watches the sunset, and Spock watches her. Inopportune, as twice she catches him at it. The second time, she tucks her hair back, twisting in it in her hands before pushing it behind her shoulder.

"It's beautiful," she says, her elbow raised towards the sky, the clouds rimmed in gold and the air taking on the shine of deep evening around them. At the base of her throat, a necklace rests, and the collar of her shirt sits against her neck, just so.

"Yes," he says.

"We do not have these," Tabitha says, both hands splayed over the railing and her body leaning forward over it. "Nyota, have you ever seen a _le mataya_? Or a _sehlat_?"

"I've seen pictures," she says. "But no, I've never been to Vulcan."

"You should visit us," Tabitha says.

"Well," she says, and where her hair has already slipped forward again, stirred by the breeze coming off the water that flutters strands against her face, she tucks it behind her ear. "I'd love to."

"Spock had a _sehlet_ , before I was born. _I-Chaya_. Father said I could not get one."

"I'm sorry," Nyota says.

"Perhaps a cat," Spock suggests and does not think that Nyota would need to be privy to the link that arcs between him and Tabitha to understand the look that she gives him.

"Cats are not allowed on Vulcan," she says, turning back to the sea. "They are responsible for much of the destruction of the Terran avian population. It is illogical to allow them off world, as they are uncontrollable and hazardous. Import regulations expressly forbid their transport."

"I'm not sure I knew that." Nyota leans her hip against the railing. In doing so, her arm passes closer to Spock than it has been since dinner. He remains where he is, their sleeves touching, if not their arms.

In front of him, Tabitha again rises onto her toes and, as one of the sea lions dips beneath the water and reappears closer, presses up onto her hands, as if it will help her gain a material amount of height.

She was so short, once.

And she is heavier now too, when he lifts her with a hand beneath each arm, the circle of her ribs slight and the effort minimal, and yet she is so much more substantial than she had been, when he could easily balance her on one arm. Against the rail, the soles of her shoes squeak as she adjusts herself. Carefully, he keeps a hand braced on her.

"Why are they called sea lions?" she asks. Then, she turns. So close to him, the twitch at the corner of her mouth is readily apparent. "I am taller than you."

"You are not." He nudges at her mind and she pushes back. "You are up higher."

"Semantics," she says.

"I am going to set you back down," he says, but he does not, not right then, as Nyota bites at her lip, and the sky turns gold and then red.

"What's next?" Nyota asks, when Tabitha finally jumps to the ground, the evening darkening, as the sun slips away and the sea lions leave suggestions of shadow against their rock.

"Would you like to go to the park?" Spock asks.

The drop of Tabitha's shoulders is nearly imperceptible, but his hands rest on them, and he can feel their fall and the answering echo in his mind. "Father does not want me to stay up late."

She does not move, her eyes still on the water, though her stillness does not extend to her mind, which is awash in that moment, a strong buzz of annoyance mixed with trepidation, a well worn irritation that she must return to school so soon and a desire to do anything but. Spock knows well that familiar war with logic she wages and knows too that desire to ignore it. Easier, as a child, and easier still when Tabitha was younger, an excuse for a tenuous grasp of logic, once worn away by passing years.

She will be older still the next time that Spock sees her. Taller, yet again. More mature, though it is hard to picture when what readily comes to mind is her as her even younger self, those years when he would visit home and compel her to leave his room, refrain from touching his padd, leave him to a moment's peace.

When she slips from beneath his hand, he lets her go and watches her trail a hand down the railing, the curve of it leading back to the city.

A few steps more and she will be too far away to touch, and further still and she will disappear back into the crowd, though with none of her earlier eagerness. Another argument might come, a suggestion Tabitha furnishes, an appeal to extend the evening, but their father's presence sits as firmly in Spock's mind as it surely does in Tabitha's, a closeness, and a strength to that proximity that weighs heavy. All the more difficult it makes everything, and how entirely, completely accustomed to that he is.

He turns to Nyota. "Are you occupied this evening?"

He is nearly certain he knows the answer. Still, he is gratified when she says, "No."

"Tabitha," he says, so that she will stop walking. Nyota is so close to him. Another day here, a different evening, the night spinning out other than how it is, he is suddenly sure of what he would do in the quiet that hangs between them, suspended and anticipatory. But Tabitha slips further away and to Nyota, he can only say, "If you would like, you should join us."

Her smile is slow, but when it comes it is broad, her eyes shining. "Where are we going?"

"I had thought, perhaps, to find snow."


	10. Chapter 10

"Pull over," Tabitha says, her forehead pressed to the window, and her breath creating a foggy, imperfect circle on the glass.

"There is far more ahead," he says and needlessly gestures to the road that stretches up towards the mountains, dark silhouettes against the black night, shadows where no stars shine in the sky before them.

"Please," she says in a voice hardly less than a demand.

Nyota smiles at him when he slows the car. Carefully, he edges onto the shoulder, well out of the way of any oncoming traffic. Though only sparsely have other cars appeared on these winding roads, bright dashes of headlights that cut through the night and dim again in a wash of red. Overwhelmingly, it has just been them, alone in the dark once the city lights faded behind them.

When he stops the car completely, Nyota has her lower lip caught between her teeth, the pressure creating small divots in the skin. When she releases her lip, her tongue passes over it.

She is looking at him.

Cold air rushes into the car. Quickly, he turns to Tabitha. "This is not a safe place to stop."

"A moment," she says, though it takes far more than that for her to first push the toe of her shoe into the hard pack of snow that lines the edge of the road and then to scoop some up into her palm. The piles of snow are patchy, half melted from the day's sun and frozen again. Still, how it crusts and breaks in her fingers hardly deters her, passing the clump from one palm to another, and when it crumbles, falling apart each time she touches it, she bends to pick up even more.

"Do not bring that in the car," he says.

"It is only frozen water."

"It contains a number of pollutants."

The car door closes firmly behind her. "If it were truly hazardous, the environmental services of this planet would not allow it to remain on the roadside where it could contaminate the watershed."

Logical, their father would say. Mind your clothes, their mother would tell her.

Spock's only capitulation to the moment is to dial the heat higher, cold having seeped into his neck, feathered across his shoulders, and cooled the front of the car. He is sure that Tabitha has borne the brunt of the weather, her jacket unfastened and her cheeks already flushed green. Nyota is smiling once more, her thumb hooked beneath the strap of her safety belt and her eyes on him. As he eases the car onto the road again, he knows her attention does not shift, so he alone is left watching the direction they are headed, Tabitha bent over the increasingly thawed sample in her hands and Nyota studying him until his skin pricks with it.

He does not stop again until they have reached the edge of the forest park, a conservation area set aside so long ago that the road leading to it bears signs of its age. Potholes such as these would have been long mended on Vulcan, though left here as they are, they add to the backdrop of the woods at night, moonlit and silver where snow catches the low light and reflects it back.

With the engine cut off, it is silent. Still. Completely so, no chirp of birds or rush of the city, and in the hush, not even wind stirs tree branches together, laden as they are with their heavy loads of snow.

Then the door behind him unlatches once more, thrown open to the cold.

Tabitha takes slow steps from the car, alternating her attention from the shift of it beneath her feet to the expanse of it before her. It would be a meadow in the summer, here at the edge of the trees and mountains, a clearing that stretches out. Now, it is covered in a snowpack thick enough that her feet do not reach ground, just leave imprints where she walks, each step left behind in a distinct, crisp marking of where she has been.

When Spock stands, snow encrusts his boots as well, and cold air works its way into his collar, up the cuffs of his sleeves, bright and brittle with the chill of it. Nyota steps from the car too, her hands cupped before her mouth and her elbows drawn tight to her sides.

He allows his eyebrow to rise, his mind reaching for Tabitha's attention. "Has this been sufficient?" he asks, calling to her across the still of the night.

Moonlight catches on the purse of her lips, how her eyes narrow. "It is illogical to drive here if we do not stay longer."

Nyota laughs, glitter clear in the sharp air. When they both turn to her, she cups her fist before her mouth, though it does little to hide her smile. Would that she never stop. He will learn to tolerate that jump in his stomach at the sight of her, adapt to the presence of that warm glow and live with its persistence. An acceptable adjustment, given how the snow shine catches bright in her eyes, how the same warmth that lights her face sits growing in him too, beating back the sweep of the chill around them.

"Go, then," he says to his sister, his head tipping towards the field and the forest and all that awaits there. It is hardly his idea, the thought sitting at the forefront of her mind, pushing and tripping over itself with her eagerness. Her expression betrays none of this, though she knows of his awareness of her desire, and the delight that swoops through her when he articulates what it is that she wants. How little she does to hide all that from him. So foreign an idea it is for him, to be so transparent, so unequivocal even in his own thoughts, let alone what might slip across to another.

Two steps, and then she stops. Snow reaches nearly to her knees and already he knows that when she returns it will be with wet shoes and socks and pant legs, and a green flush of excitement that will alleviate that discomfort and so much more besides. "For how long?" she asks.

He could tell her to fasten her coat. Instead, he says, "It is, as I have been reminded, vacation."

She runs off, boot prints left behind her and the top of her head disappearing over the bank of the meadow where it meets the trees. For a moment all is still, and then snow falls from a tree branch, a sparkling drift that billows downwards.

He cannot feel the slide of the wet snow down his own neck, but knows that it has happened to her all the same. Were she still closer, he could likely hear her sudden exclamation of shock that knocking the branch above her so lightly had such an effect. As it is, that startle touches him, along with another emotion entirely, irritation pushed away for a feeling akin to determination, resolve. Long ago he remembers that same upwelling, though then it was not the soft mush of snow beneath his feet but the grit of sand and the dirt that clung to the paths winding up the mountains.

Alone together in the white bright of the moonlight, Nyota leans back to half sit on the hood of his car. A smile still lights her face, though it is smaller now, her eyes following where Tabitha has gone, before they shift to find his own.

"She's great."

There is space enough beside her. And the engine is still warm, a pleasant spot to settle. Logical, then, to rest his weight there. The only possible, reasonable choice.

"My mother always says that she is 'something else'," he says, which causes Nyota's smile to grow. "Though what, she has never specified."

She had said the same to Spock when he was younger, long before Tabitha was born. Then, he had not understood the phrase, attributing it to a Terran idiom with a nonsensicality that rendered it inconsequential. Later, he had reconsidered. For what else could truly describe Tabitha, what words could serve to begin to grasp all that she is.

Again, Nyota catches at her bottom lip with her teeth, and his eyes travel there, drawn despite himself. "Commander Spock. That has a nice ring, you know. And I can't even believe it. I'm-" Her head shakes, the motion carried gently through to his own arm so near to hers. "I'm so happy for you."

The snow is marred by their footsteps, patted down before his car where they are standing, the small treads of her shoes clear and the larger prints of his own. Carefully he knocks snow from the side of his boot. Eventually he nods, though he is certain he is supposed to do more than that. Thank her, in all likelihood. That is the Terran response offered in answer to such congratulations.

"Really," she says, and he only nods once more, uncertain how to begin to talk about all this and what might come out of his mouth were he to try.

How poorly words serve to hold all that rushes inside of him. Though perhaps this inarticulateness he could tell her, for who else would understand that so well, so completely. Or understands it already, perhaps, as she sits there in the silence with him.

How very, very glad of her he is.

"I went up to the _Enterprise_ with the Captain," he says finally.

"How was it?"

Up above them, the stars glitter, hard pinpricks of white light, hung in the sky shining. Among them is Spacedock and the ship next to it. A brighter white than here, none of the silver that coats the landscape before them.

"Exceptional," he says. Though so much has been, and so recently.

Soon, perhaps, this constant stir inside of him will settle. What is new now will become normal, his life shifted to make room for a different form of ordinary.

But a better one. Hope is illogical, but expectation is not, and the new shape to the coming weeks is no longer hemmed in by the banality of the semester but formed over again entirely with opportunities so novel he cannot yet begin to truly make sense of them. He will, though. His return to work will be heralded with duties and tasks he cannot now anticipate but will lend structure to his life in a way he will soon become used to.

And to sit here, on the edge of it all. Spelled out before him, a beginning so soon to come that he can nearly believe it started already.

Nyota's lips are parted, and when she ducks forward, her eyes on him, he tracks her movements in the shift of her hair over her shoulder, the swing of her earring. Her hands are spread over the hood of the car and she locks her wrists, bearing her weight there as she leans into him. For a moment, the brisk, brittle smell of night air is replaced by her perfume. The same scent as when he entered his office to find her there, bent over her padd but already looking up towards him, even before the door was fully whisked open.

"I thought you might be smiling," she says.

"I am not." This, by rote. Before even he can think that she would hardly mind. That she might have asked out of the very aspiration thereof, a thought that arrives as a dull sort of realization, rendered only from how her eyes track over his face.

It is so difficult, as always, to depend on sight alone to form an understanding of another, the modularities of voice and the choice of words. So utterly imperfect to rely on this, when even a light press of thoughts carries so much more.

Her nails are painted a deep blue. Nearly black, in the darkness the edge of the forest wraps them in. Her fingertips would be chilled, even with the warmth of the car. His are. Stiff and cold, despite the jacket he wears.

She continues to watch him, near enough that he can note each minute shift of her eyes and see clearly the small puffs of cloud her breath creates. What she is looking for, he does not know, only sure of his certainty that they have done this too often now, this liminal precipice of a moment where time drags, moments counted out in the rush of his heartbeat.

He looks at her lips. Takes a breath and considers shifting closer still.

But when he does not, Nyota leans back, and the plunge in his stomach as she tucks her hair back, staring now out across the snow, is unbearable.

Overwhelming. As all of this is.

I apologize, he nearly says. Forgive me. Please.

Instead when he opens his mouth, it is to say, "You are cold."

Down the hill, Tabitha is clambering over rocks, distracted to the degree that the brush of his mind on hers does not pull her thoughts away from the next ledge she will jump to. In all likelihood, continuing downhill will require a climb back up she did not anticipate, though she will soon learn that lesson. Spock does not impart it, withdrawing as much as he is able and leaving her to her adventures.

He is hardly more prepared than Tabitha, but at least he has long since learned to travel around Earth with suitable clothing. From his bag, placed in his car that morning, he retrieves a jacket. Innocuous, it is. And scarcely had he anticipated he would need it now, predicting that he would be unpacking in his apartment tonight, alone in those rooms with a quiet he had not had for days now.

Though his ability to anticipate his own future has proven poor, at best. And now, handing the coat to Nyota, he is sure he never knew to foresee this, the blue silver of the moonlight, how the sleeves hang too long over her hands, the fall of her hair as she pulls it from beneath the collar.

"Thank you," she says. Once, she had said the same when he handed her a syllabus, that very first day when she was a cadet among many. Now she stands ankle deep in the snow. How different she seems now. The urge to speak to this swells in him, and unbidden he feels his mouth part on words he has only half thought. You were my student, he could say. I did not know you at all and look, now, at this.

But that is not all of what he intends. Is not even half of it, that backwards look at their shared history. No, not when the days before him already hold such promise, such unexpected, unanticipated potential.

Unbidden, his hand reaches out to the front of his own jacket that she wears.

"Nyota," he says, and her face tips up, her eyebrows raised, waiting.

He does not release the fabric that he has taken in his fingers, and the continued contact seems only to compel her to sway into him. The proximity of his hands to her is nearly dizzying. Incomprehensible. Unfathomable, except for the feel of the cloth, the cold snap of air over his wrist, the hint of what it might be if his hand were closer still.

The effort to not hesitate is significant. Unnecessary, that ever present urge to pause, an inefficiency in this and in so much else in his life, that lick of disbelief that what he wishes for might actually be brought about, that he might succeed in what he attempts. Inaction is safer. And yet it brings its own discontent. Writ differently, but no less potent. Between yet another unsated moment and the possibility of gratification, he compels himself onward. For when has she ever not been there to meet him, eyes turned towards him and waiting, a patience that has persisted for so long now, enduring enough he has grown more certain of it, that constant, steady acceptance she offers.

"If you are amenable," he says, "I wonder if I might continue to see you." He pauses. Considers his words, now that he can hear them, now that they are not shuttered inside of his mind but hanging bright in the night air. "Outside of work," he clarifies.

He will be dissatisfied with anything less. This he knows as surely as he can see her smile, forming first in her eyes and then spreading over her face.

"Very amenable," she says and steps closer into him.

Tension leaves him, and he has to bend his head in his struggle for control over his expression, his mind, the tumble of thoughts that rush forth in him. Even subdued, the ebb of nerves is only mitigated, sitting in his stomach, his chest, a hot wash that threatens to continue to beat and pulse.

The hand she lays over his only fuels that spark. She blinks twice. Against his knuckles, her fingers are cold. The cuff of the coat she wears is caught between her palm and the back of his hand.

He knows quite clearly what he wants, and that too light touch is not it. He swallows. And then he bends down to her.

It is a simple kiss, her lips warm and gentle, and her nose a cold brush against his cheek, and yet the contact lingers in a way he did not think to anticipate. He might have, though, and perhaps it might have prepared him for this. He can smell her skin. Against his face, her nearness is a brush of warmth in the cool night air. Softly, her lips tug at his. Of course a hazy, imagined picture in his mind is hardly comparable to the fact of it, so much so that it nearly takes him a moment to comprehend that it is happening at all, that this is not some fantasy spun out to himself. But her fingers rise to touch his jaw, and when he presses into the kiss, she returns the pressure with a firmness of her own that wears down any impulse to let his mind wander anywhere but on the fact of her lips against his, how she moves into him when he allows his hand to touch light to her back.

When he finally pulls away, her eyes open slowly.

He likely never knew the correct thing to say in this moment and even if he did, most cohesive thoughts have swiftly abandoned him. Any that might remain are rendered inert from how she continues to touch his face, the shape of her back beneath his hand. She has not moved away very far and instead is nearly tucked into him, close enough that his chin must tip down to look at her. Slowly he gathers loose strands of her hair from her face, soft around his fingers. There is much he would ask of what will happen in the coming days, weeks, months between them, what has passed already, an ordering of their shared history so far, laid out together as to what began when, the impetus of the first thoughts of this. Always has he wished for greater clarity, the careful search for complete understanding, and so too in this. Even more so, perhaps. But that can wait. For now, he leans down and they kiss again, the sounds of their mouths filling the snow dampened silence, her lips a warm contrast to the crisp chill of the night air around them.

…

Nyota wakes as the car slows. Before them the lights of the city shine in the dark stillness of night, and behind him, he knows that an edge of dawn is creeping into the sky. Her mouth works softly as he takes the exit from the highway that leads to campus, her eyes blinking open as she lifts a finger to rub a knuckle beneath her lower eyelid.

"Good morning," he says and still tucked into his coat, arms crossed over her chest and her cheek against the back of her seat, she smiles.

He parks at her dorm and for a moment they simply watch each other. Then he unhooks his safety belt. She turns towards the backseat, long fingers tucking her hair behind her ear.

"Tabitha," Nyota says, barely more than a whisper. His sister's eyes blink open, bleary. "I'll see you again soon, I hope."

"Goodbye," Tabitha murmurs before shifting deeper into her seat, her eyes closed once more.

Outside Nyota's hand rises to the fastening of the jacket she wears. With a step, he is near enough to stop her, his hand caught around her elbow, his other cupping her arm. It is cool, still, the fog thick and close. Her movement arrested, her hands hang in the air between them before she lays them on his chest. Her touch is so light. Gentle, until her fingers tighten on his shoulders. Kissing her is still novel. Thrilling. A riveting, gripping, entirely fascinating experience. He touches her cheek, feeling how her jaw shifts as they kiss, tracing out the movement with the pads of his fingers. To think that this might become commonplace is tantalizing, incredible, impossible and believable all at once. When they part, it is only to kiss again and then pull back once more, breathing the same air, their noses bumping together.

"Later today," he whispers. The growing blue pink of dawn shines over her face, catches the curve of her cheek, the edge of her smile. With his thumb, he touches the corner of her lips. "I will call you."

"You better," she whispers back, leaning closer once more, the words pressed into his own mouth, her body fit against his, and she does not release him, and so too does he not let his hands fall from her, instead cupping the side of her neck in his palm and drawing her closer still, as her arm wraps over his shoulders.

The thought of her fills him after they have finally stepped apart, when the dew of the morning air is replaced by the warmth of his car, when he keys the engine to life and begins to reverse from the lot, the feel of her lips in his mind, how she held him, tight and firm, balanced on her toes as she was.

Quite suddenly, Tabitha sits up.

"Wait," Tabitha says and then is opening the door before Spock has fully come to a stop. "Nyota!"

At the door to her dorm, Nyota turns. Tabitha runs towards her, stops, and returns to the car to rifle through her bag, finally drawing out her handful of padds.

When Tabitha reaches her, Nyota bends down to her to take them, shaking too long sleeves back from her hands and quite clearly speaking, though Spock cannot hear what is said. Instead he watches, Tabitha staring upwards at Nyota, pointing once and then twice to the padds and then slipping Nyota something more, a piece of paper that shines white against the lingering dark of early morning.

When she returns, Tabitha settles herself in the front seat.

"Will I see her again?" she asks.

He too watches Nyota slip through the doors of her dorm. "I believe so."

"And Gaila?"

"If you visit Earth again before they graduate, yes."

"But you will be gone."

"Not for some time." Not before Nyota and Gaila earn their commissions, which is more pleasing than should be the case. Fortunate, truly. A fact of scheduling in all actuality. Lucky, his mother would call it, and after a night with no sleep, his mind laced through with thoughts of Nyota, the effort to be at odds with such a thought is beyond him.

"Will you come home again before you leave?" Tabitha asks.

He shifts from studying the facade of Nyota's dorm to Tabitha beside him. For so long, home did not contain her. He lived so much of his life without her in it, without even the thought of her. And now to go home again will mean having her there, as she has been for so many years, waiting in the doorway as he walks up the stone steps, once reaching upwards towards him, hands extended and her mind outstretched. "Yes." Precisely when, he does not know. But he will. There is time enough for that. "Ships often visit Vulcan. I would anticipate that we may be sent there even after we deploy."

"Truly?" she asks, as if he did not just say this. "May I see the ship, if you do?"

"Perhaps."

"May I see it now?"

"No." He should back out of the parking lot, though he does not. "Do you really wish to be a Starfleet officer?"

Her lips purse. She was so small, once. Unimaginable now to think that all the force of who she has grown to be once fit into a body that was lost in the folds of a blanket.

"I am considering all of my options," she says, and for the vehemence of her words, he finds himself surprised she does not cross her arms over her chest.

"If you would like to be in Starfleet, I cannot imagine that you will do anything but," he says. "However, your talent with art should not be subjugated. You should pursue that, if you wish to."

For some time, Tabitha stares out the window, and he sits there beside her, dawn slowly lightening the interior of the car.

"You are sufficiently adept," he finally says.

"I am hungry."

She is. He can feel this against his mind, as fully as if her desire for food were his own. And she is still cold, her clothes still wet. He turns the heat higher and nods. "Breakfast would then be the logical choice."

Elsewhere in the city, their father is already awake. If the light filling the car is not evidence enough of this fact, the hum of Sarek's mind against his own is sufficient in itself. His mother is still asleep and likely will be for some time. When she wakes, Spock will not need to comm his father for him to find them, and Amanda will be brought along as well, likely ordering coffee before even considering food. Already he knows he will drive them to the transport station and will wait for their shuttle with them, lingering there until they have left, departed through the gate with the other travelers who are returning home.

And then the morning will be his own, to call Nyota, to read the messages surely awaiting him from Pike, and to contact the Academy regarding the shift in his duties for the coming semesters. There will be new uniforms, a second, thicker rank stripe, the business of paperwork and likely the need to endure the congratulations of his colleagues. And that will likely be only the beginning of what is to come, more and better things spread out before him that he can hardly begin to know to anticipate.

But for now, there is Tabitha beside him, clicking her safety belt shut. "Gaila recommended waffles, a suggestion that Nyota seconded."

"Is there anything you did not discuss with them?"

"Yes."

"Did she have a suggestion as to where to find them?"

"She did not."

Spock lets his hand rest on the back of her seat as he reverses from the parking space. "In that case, I believe that, as ever, we are on our own."

…

 _The End_

1/2/17: So many thanks and so much gratitude to you all for sharing in this story- and especially again to wifebeast-s for the amazing beta job, to Sam for everything and all that she does, and to jusysyllygirl who drew a _beautiful_ portrait of Tabitha. It's posted on my blog on tumblr under the 'warp trails and fairy tales' tag and you all should check it out- it made my day, my week, and my year. Here's to a happy 2017, the stubborn belief that Tabitha is in fact canon, and the wonderful corner of fandom that is all things spock/uhura.


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